Ride share giants Uber and Lyft are facing a handful of gender discrimination lawsuits, filed by a group of male drivers who claim that recent driver preference policies have negatively impacted their opportunities for rides and revenue.

In July, Uber announced gender-based preferences for women riders allowing them to request and reserve rides with only women drivers or set an app-wide preference for non-male drivers. Lyft has had a similar opt-in feature in place since 2023, known as Women+ Connect, which connects women and nonbinary riders with only non-male drivers.

The lawsuits — filed in a on behalf of four plaintiffs — ask for $4,000 in damages per male driver to make up for the perceived loss in revenue allegedly caused by the gender preference features. It claims the companies, which are headquartered in California, violated the state's Unruh Act, a Civil Rights law that "prohibits sex discrimination by business enterprises." They suggest hundreds of thousands of male drivers would be eligible to receive money in a class action suit.

Conservative organizations and alt-right figures have vocally denounced the safety features, too. The Heritage Foundation, authors of the Trump administration's Project 2025, said Uber's policy constituted a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Both Uber and Lyft have been sued multiple times, including class action lawsuits, for failing to address safety concerns among women riders, some of whom suffered from sexual misconduct and sexual assaults. A recent investigation by the New York Times found that Uber has a "pervasive" problem with sexual misconduct, with more than 400,000 trips reported between 2017 and 2022. Court records suggest those numbers have risen since the company stopped disclosing the data in the years since. In addition to women riders who say they have often feared for their safety when using ride shares, women drivers have additionally accused the companies of sexist workplace policies.

TikTok's For You page has revolutionised the way we consume content online. Creators catapult to virality overnight, and algorithms dictate the videos we consume, rather than our following lists. This is a positive for creators and influencers in some ways, as it can make it simpler to find new and relevant audiences and grow. But as clever as these algorithms are, they don't always get it right. And it's all too easy for a video to end up on the screen of the wrong person. 

This is a particular concern for female creators, with the rise of misogyny online. In fact, 60 percent of teen girls in the U.S. have encountered harassment on social media platforms, according to a 2023 survey by Pew Research Center. In the UK, the Office for National Statistics found that 23 percent of women aged 16 to 24 have reported incidents of sexual harassment, with the UK government recently recognising violence against women, which includes online abuse, as a national threat.

Dealing with misogyny online is difficult for anyone, but it becomes a particular issue when posting content online is your job. Not only do you rely on the income you make on social media, but you also must spend a lot of time on these apps. When you're dealing with misogynistic abuse on a daily basis, going online becomes unenjoyable, unsafe, and a threat to your career.

Misogyny on the FYP

When influencer and author Hari Beavis's recipe content and vlogs started to go viral on TikTok, she quickly became subject to abuse. "If one of my videos hits a male audience, I will not look at the comments because I know there will be hate or misogynistic comments," she tells Mashable. This includes comments sexualizing her body: "There are endless comments about my breasts on some videos," she says.

Beavis isn't alone in her experiences either. Eliza Hatch is the founder of Cheer Up Luv, a feminist platform she founded in 2017 to address the public sexual harassment women face across the world. But it wasn't on that platform, but her own personal social media page, when Hatch started posting videos of herself skateboarding that she found herself subject to an extreme amount of online misogyny. "When I started posting about my skateboarding journey on TikTok, I initially received a lot of negative comments from men telling me how shit I was and that skateboarding isn't for girls," she says. "I was really surprised at that level of vitriol I was experiencing just from posting about my personal experiences of skateboarding."

One of the reasons online misogyny is such a concern right now is because of the rise of incel culture online, and social media algorithms play a big part in this. A 2024 algorithmic study by University College London found that the amount of misogynistic content shown to teen users on TikTok could increase by 400 percent in just five days, which has a huge knock-on effect for women sharing content online.

Certain incel groups online promote networked misogyny, when high-profile figures encourage others to actively harass women online, explains Dr Carolina Are, a social media researcher at Northumbria University's Centre for Digital Citizens. 

"Some of them may just be reacting to content they see, while others may search keywords or be part of groups where content is dropped to trigger harassment," Dr Are says, adding: "This is to destabilise individual creators, but it's also more sinister: it's an active campaign to silence specific users, and to create a homogenous idea of acceptable femininity based on archaic gender roles."

One of the issues with algorithms that promote recommended content rather than showing your posts to a list of people who have chosen to follow you is that it's almost impossible to hide your posts from people you don't want them to reach. Plus, algorithms are driven by engagement, but it doesn't matter why or how someone is engaging with the content. When someone who is using a social media app to promote misogyny sees and engages with a video, it's pushed out to a similar audience because the algorithm thinks they might engage with it too, which turns into a toxic cycle in which the creator is suddenly exposed to a huge amount of trolling.

Furthermore, many people use apps like TikTok anonymously. "On TikTok, a lot of people have faceless accounts because not everyone makes and posts TikToks, so they feel they can say anything they want, and in my case, it's always from men about my body," Beavis says. Hatch agrees that she feels safer on apps where she's interacting with people who have chosen to follow her: "On Instagram, I've got such an amazing community that I always feel protected — everyone stands up for each other," she says.

"A lot of accounts, particularly on platforms like TikTok, are anonymous and just exist to lurk, either for harassment purposes or because they're not interested in creating content," Dr Are explains. "Without a stable identity, these users aren't encouraged to act in a civil way."

Making social media safer for women

Finding safe spaces online for women is, therefore, becoming increasingly difficult, as more and more social media apps switch to algorithmic formats that show you recommended posts. For Beavis, this meant stopping posting on TikTok for a period. 

"I didn't post on TikTok for a few months as it really got me down and I didn't see the point in posting if my videos were just going to an audience that [was] going to objectify me," she says. It was also one of the reasons she made a private community specifically for women, called The Big Tittie Committee. As you might have guessed from the name, the community is designed for women with larger breasts, sharing tips, recommendations, and experiences. For Beavis, the obvious decision was to make this account private with an admissions process. "I wanted this to be my private female empowerment page — a place without men on social media," she says.

Aside from making private accounts, there's no simple solution to eradicating this type of misogyny from social media for the creators experiencing it. But is there any way of making these algorithms safe for women? "I don't think these mechanisms are inherently harmful because they are similar to offline life — they just act on a much more heightened scale and with [fewer] checks and balances," Dr Are says. "If I have one person on the street harassing me, it's just one person and I can hopefully report them to the police," she continues. "If I go viral, it's like a whole city is harassing me all at once without any consequences for them and no protection for me."

Relying on ourselves, not platforms

According to the TikTok Community Guidelines, misogyny is called a hateful ideology. When asked for comment, a TikTok spokesperson echoed some of this definition and told Mashable: "Misogyny is a hateful ideology that is not tolerated on TikTok, and we remove 88 percent of content found to break these rules before it is reported to us." The app will take action against comments that violate its policies. 

But the creators Mashable spoke to noted that they feel as though a lot of the responsibility falls on them to manage these comments themselves, by deleting and reporting them. "In my own experience, following some of my videos going viral, I was the one who had to insert keywords such as 'rape' in my comment filters," Dr Are says.

The added responsibility of moderating what is an overwhelmingly hateful comment section is a particular issue when you're using social media as your main form of income, having to choose between continuing to earn money by posting or refraining from doing so to protect yourself from misogyny. "With a larger following, as it grows, you become susceptible to more unwanted comments," says Beavis, who has over 300,000 followers on Instagram.

It's unfortunate, given that influencing is a career that's dominated by women (an estimated 77 percent of influencers globally are women), that online spaces feel far from safe. "Social media can be so amazing in so many ways, but for a woman, it can be really destructive," Beavis says. Hatch agrees that as much as she's tried to ignore the abuse, it has changed her experience of using social media: "I definitely don't post as much about skateboarding anymore — it has had a lasting impact," she says.

Ultimately, all of this goes to show just how novel algorithms like the For You page are and the potential dangers of relying on automated systems, as well as artificial intelligence, to keep us safe online. And it leads us to ask: Is there a world in which social media platforms can prioritise healthy, meaningful usage and interactions over a pursuit for maximal, and ultimately unhealthy, levels of engagement? The idea already feels utopian, but it's essential if we're to hope for a feminist digital world.

Five years ago, when the COVID pandemic forced all non-essential workers to stay home, American families were swiftly forced to reorganize themselves.

Suddenly, they had no childcare, no school, and no support system to help them navigate an unprecedented moment in their lifetimes. But just as unexpectedly, parents and caregivers whose jobs could be performed remotely had something relatively novel: the ability to work from home.

For many mothers who could take advantage of remote work, it was a burden and blessing that ultimately became indispensable. Once their kids went back to daycare or school, the flexibility of working from home often meant they could better juggle the many demands on their time, including the disproportionate amount of housework they perform compared to their male partners.

"There was a massive amount of efficiencies that happened in terms of managing lives during the pandemic, ironically," says Susan MacKenty Brady, CEO of the Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership.

Now, some business leaders, and even the president of the United States, are determined to roll back workplace flexibility.

In January, President Donald Trump declared that government employees would be required to return to their workplace. Last month, in a company town hall, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimond offered a profanity-laced explanation for why his employees had to work five days a week in-person again. Amazon and AT&T, among other companies, have also called employees back to the office.

Proponents say working in person full-time will boost productivity, but experts say that women will pay a unique price.

"It's going to affect the advancement of women notably, because we got a taste for a bit of what we could do if we were given our own choices," MacKenty Brady says.

A workplace 'disconnect'

By 2023, women had finally rejoined the workforce at the same rate as men prior to the pandemic, according to the Institute for Women's Policy Research. But it took them 11 months longer than it took men to reach that milestone; women didn't achieve their pre-pandemic employment level until childcare jobs also recovered.

Now it appears that many women rely on remote work to succeed at home and in their professional role. CNBC’s annual Women at Work survey recently found that about a quarter of respondents said their work-life balance had improved over the last year. They attributed the change primarily to having a more flexible schedule.

Of 700 women in the job market, the vast majority characterized their hunt as "very difficult," largely because they're unable to find remote or hybrid roles.

Organizational psychologist Patricia Grabarek says the push to end flexible work reflects, in part, the prerogative of high-powered executives, many of whom are men, who can hire people to manage their households and lives (or delegate those tasks to a stay-at-home wife or partner). Their days are also filled with important meetings that they may prefer to happen in person.

As a result, what executives think work can and should look like often varies significantly from their employees' needs, and how they best achieve productivity.

"There is this disconnect...for what the day-to-day looks like for employees," says Grabarek, who is also the author of Leading for Wellness: How to Create a Team Culture Where Everyone Thrives.

The pressure-cooker of office vs. home

Along with that disconnect, there's silence about the reality of ending remote work, particularly for women.

Reporting back to the office full-time doesn't mean that home and community responsibilities suddenly disappear. There are still kids who need to be promptly picked up from after-school care, dogs that need walking, errands that must be run, doctors' appointments that can't be missed, and so on.

Whereas mothers (and fathers) could previously use time spent commuting on some of these tasks, now they're back in their cars or riding public transportation. When flexibility vanishes, MacKenty Brady says the answer is often to buy more childcare. That only puts additional pressure on households to earn more to afford care while also creating fresh tension for mothers who feel spread thin.

MacKenty Brady says it's rare to hear corporate leaders publicly acknowledge these pressures, even as their insistence on in-person work could actually diminish productivity and engagement by increasing stress and exhaustion.

MacKenty Brady believes that even if women aren't vocally opposing return-to-work mandates, perhaps because they fear the repercussions of doing so, they also won't tolerate the shift over the long term.

More than 1 in 5 of women surveyed by CNBC said they'd "seriously considered quitting" in recent months in an effort to reduce work stress and find a higher-paying job. Of the 8 percent of women who did quit, they cited improved work-life balance as the chief factor in their decision.

There's no indication yet that significant numbers of women will drop out of the workforce, but Grabarek says that decreased flexibility may force women to step away from their jobs, just as they did during COVID.

The corporate trend against flexible work might also help explain the appeal of the so-called tradwife lifestyle, even for women who have no interest in the religious aspects of it.

"People are feeling exhausted, they're feeling burnt out," Grabarek says. "I think the idealism behind this freer seeming life, where you're just able to focus on the simple thing, feels nice."

MacKenty Brady doesn't believe in pitting housewives against career women. But she does note that staying home may be the product of forces beyond a woman's control.

"If a woman genuinely chooses a more traditional role because it aligns with her values and aspirations, that is her right and should be respected," she says. "However, if societal pressures, romanticized nostalgia, or economic limitations are shaping that choice, then we must question whether it’s truly a choice at all."

MacKenty Brady says that despite the emphasis on getting back to the office full-time, offering flexible work options is a no-brainer, because women are essential to the American workforce. In other words, alienating them is no strategy for a company's financial success.

This week, a viral Instagram post stated that Apple cut International Women's Day (March 8) from its calendar — but that's not quite right.

Bellesa, a sex toy brand, posted on March 4, "Apple quietly removed International Women's Day from the calendar. That's weird." The carousel post goes on to explain how one can add it to their own Apple Calendar. International Women's Day was first observed in 1911, according to the IWD website, and is now run by various groups across the world. It's nestled in Women's History Month, and is a day to celebrate women's achievements and advocate for their rights.

This post, which has over 41,000 likes as of publication, came after Google Calendar removed Black History Month, Pride Month, and more holidays around three weeks ago. The tech giant stated it was due to a move to only include public holidays and national observances, but the removals prompted public outrage, as their timing aligns with the anti-diversity push fueled by Donald Trump's second presidential term.

Since coming back into office in January, Trump has overseen the removal of LGBTQ White House pages and language about queer and trans people on other government websites, as part of an overall crusade to end Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. Tech companies have started to comply with this, such as Meta and Google removing its DEI programs. (Apple shareholders recently voted to keep its DEI policies.)

Given the anti-DEI push, commenters easily believed that Apple made this move. But according to Politifact, this isn't the case because Apple apparently never had International Women's Day on its calendar in the first place. Apple told Politifact that neither International Women's Day nor Women's History Month were ever featured on Apple Calendar.

Mashable has reached out to both Apple and Bellesa, and will update this story if we hear back.

On June 24, 2022 , the U.S. Supreme Court — led by a conservative majority — chose to repeal the privacy rights afforded to all Americans by overturning the landmark precedent enshrined in Roe v. Wade. Its immediate effect relegated the right of abortion access to the states, effectively threatening reproductive health services for millions of people. 

In the years since, and with the nation now led by a presidential administration seeking to wage war on "elective" abortion, reproductive health care has transformed from an enshrined right to a political bargaining chip. Between 2020 and March 2024, 42 abortions clinics and reproductive health centers shut down. National abortion funds have endured, continuing to provide financial and logistic services to populations who now have to travel beyond state lines for abortion care, as well as to those for whom the services are much more difficult to access within their own communities. Sales of emergency contraception have skyrocketed, too, ballooning once more in the wake of the 2024 election results and on inauguration day. 

President Trump has invoked the Hyde Amendment to justify the loss of reproductive health funding nationwide and pledged to return the "issue of life," or what his recent executive order refers to as "violations of faith and conscience," to the states. Just mere days after he was sworn into office, Trump pardoned 23 people who had been convicted of violating the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The bill protects reproductive health services from threats of force, obstruction, and property damage, including blocking physical access to abortion clinics, breaking into facilities, stealing fetal tissue, and accosting pregnant patients.

Violence against abortion providers has been on the rise, as well. "Since 1977, there have been 11 murders, 42 bombings, 200 arsons, 531 assaults, 492 clinic invasions, 375 burglaries, and thousands of other incidents of criminal activities directed at patients, providers, and volunteers," reports the National Abortion Federation.

And now, with Big Tech's leaders cozying up with the new administration and instituting regressive, conservative policies across their platforms, abortion providers and reproductive justice advocates are facing an increasingly hostile online environment, as well. Aid Access, one of the country's largest providers of emergency contraception, accused Meta of obscuring search results and censoring posts containing images and information on medication-based abortion. Other abortion and reproductive justice pages have been removed from search results for various periods of time, and Meta has confirmed it suspended accounts and removed related content. 

Federally, the Trump administration has moved to erase resources on reproductive health and other inclusive medical care provided on government sites, including modifying obstetric guides to contraceptive options. With fears of misinformation and censorship on social media growing, and support for reproductive health care at risk, the fight for abortion access may have to move offline — or, at least, off the For You Page.

Mapping the state of abortion access in the U.S.

Center for Reproductive Rights Abortion Laws Map

The Center for Reproductive Rights is a global, human-rights based coalition of attorneys and reproductive health advocates. Their U.S. Abortion Laws Map provides an overview of the legal landscape for abortion seekers in each state, and can be filtered by specific laws or regulations.

Credit: Center for Reproductive Rights

Guttmacher Institute's Interactive Law Map

The Guttmacher Institute is a research and policy organization focused on sexual and reproductive health and rights around the world. The institute's Interactive Law Map is a consistently updated overview of the most protective and most hostile state abortion laws — individuals can search the institute's database by specific state or policy, such as total abortion bans, constitutional protections, state abortion care funds, or shield laws for providers.

Credit: Guttmacher Institute

Noise for Now Clinic Map

Noise for Now is a non-profit organization that organizes benefit concerts and artist collaborations that raise funds for reproductive justice. The organization's interactive map locates Planned Parenthood Health Centers, independent abortion clinics (vetted as part of the Abortion Care Network, National Abortion Federation), and abortion funds for reproductive health seekers across the country.

Fake Clinic (AKA "Crisis Pregnancy Centers") Maps

Crisis Pregnancy Center Map monitors and documents organizations created by anti-abortion groups that purport to offer reproductive health care centers, also known as "crisis pregnancy centers," "anti-abortion centers," "fake clinics," or "pregnancy resource centers." The group's interactive online map allows abortion seekers to find and avoid locations that may divert them from having abortions.

Expose Fake Clinics, with support from groups like NARAL Pro-Choice America and Abortion Access Front, maintains a database of "crisis pregnancy centers" organized by state. Abortion and reproductive justice organization Reproaction also monitors and documents anti-abortion pregnancy centers.

Credit: Crisis Pregnancy Center Map

Abortion travel times by congressional district

Nonpartisan policy institute the Center for American Progress has turned national data on reproductive health access into an interactive map displaying the average travel times for individuals seeking abortions in each state. It is organized based on congressional district and was last updated in January 2025.

Credit: Center for American Progress

Abortion and emergency contraception access

I Need An A 

Launched in 2016, I Need an A is "the first comprehensive, regularly updated, and personalized resource for abortion seekers in the U.S.," the site explains. Partnered with organizations like Abortion Care Network, Apiary for Practical Support, and National Network of Abortion Funds, the platform connects abortion seekers with local (or the nearest) clinics — prioritizing user data privacy.

National Network of Abortion Funds

The National Network of Abortion Funds is a network of more than 100 abortion funds that provide financial support for abortion seekers around the country. The coalition offers grants, leadership, and technical assistance to local funds. Abortion seekers can use the site to answer questions like insurance coverage and connect with local financial assistance.

Abortion Finder

Abortion Finder is a comprehensive abortion information and resource platform that is operated by the nonprofit Power to Decide and its digital reproductive health platform Bedsider. Abortion Finder offers clinic maps, provider databases, funding and emotional support resources, as well as general information on abortion. Individuals can also find state by state guides to abortion access.

Abortion On Our Own Terms

Part of a national campaign to change the way self-managed abortion is discusses and regulated, Abortion On Our Own Terms connects individuals to secure (and culturally-sensitive) information on at-home abortion options, such as medical abortion, and menstruation tracking. Self-managed abortion with pills remains one of the most common forms of abortion.

Plan C

Plan C, started as a public health campaign, provides up-to-date information on how to access at-home abortion pill options online and by mail. Collating legal information, telehealth services, and online vendors, Plan C lays out the current state of medical abortion access.

You Always Have Options 

A central resource hub created by I Need an A, Shout Your Abortion, Plan C, and abortion chatbot Charley for individuals who live in states where abortion is restricted. You Always Have Options collates links for finding providers, emergency contraception options, and resources for securing your digital privacy, acting as a one-stop shop for essential answers to reproductive justice questions.

Identity-based and regional resources 

Asking for a Friend

A California-based, youth-focused platform that offers a variety of mental and reproductive health resources, Asking for a Friend provides practical and decision-making support to abortion seekers, including in-person and at-home options.

"The health services that we direct people to are compiled resources that we have found ourselves, that have been recommended by young people, Power to Decide (which also powers Abortionfinder.org & Bedsider), LGBTQ+ centers, as well as publicly available state data sets about providers who participate in safety net programs," the platform explained to Mashable.

Reproductive Agency Honoring Impacted Muslims (RAHIM)

An ongoing initiative from HEART — a Muslim-led national reproductive justice organization tackling gender-based violence, sexual health, and reproductive health — RAHIM seeks to provide culturally relevant resources and support to Muslim abortion seekers.

Right to an abortion for immigrants

The National Immigration Law Center offers guidance and a Know-Your-Rights guide for immigrant populations seeking abortion and reproductive health care. According to the center, undocumented people are not disqualified from seeking and obtaining an abortion based on their immigration status, although many providers may require photo ID.

Indigenous Women Rising (Rain Fund) 

Indigenous Women Rising fights for equitable and culturally safe health options for indigenous communities, including abortion, midwifery, and doula care. The organization's abortion fund (Rain Fund) is available to all Native and Indigenous people in the U.S. and Canada.

Medical and legal support

National Abortion Hotline

How to get in contact:

Call 1-800-772-9100

Monday through Friday, 8 A.M. to 7 P.M. ET

Weekends, 8 A.M. to 4 P.M. ET

Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline

How to get in contact:

Call or text 1-833-246-2632

Everyday, 8 A.M. ET to 1 A.M. ET

All Options Talkline

How to get in contact:

Call 1-888-493-0092

Monday to Friday, 10 A.M. to 1 A.M ET

Saturday to Sunday, 10 A.M to 6 A.M. ET

Repro Legal Helpline

How to get in contact: 

Call 1-844-868-2812 for general legal advice.

Call 1-866-463-7533 for financial assistance via their legal defense fund.

Fill out a contact form online to be connected with a lawyer.

Submit an online application for funding.

Abortion Defense Network

How to get in contact:

Fill out an assistance form online. 

When Donald Trump was announced the winner of the U.S. presidential election, American women began posting about the 4B movement, a radical feminist movement that originated in South Korea. From one woman saying she broke up with her Republican boyfriend on election night to join 4B to another saying she's building her "dream body that no man will touch for the next four years," discussion of the movement has exploded online.

What is 4B?

4B stands for the "four nos," which translates to no dating, no sex, no marriage, and no child-rearing, as Hawon Jung, a journalist and author of Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea's Feminist Movement & What It Means for Women's Rights Worldwide, wrote for the New York Times last year.

Discussion about 4B has grown in Western online spaces in recent years. In 2023, The Cut published a widely-discussed explainer on 4B (that's since been updated in light of the election).

4B emerged in South Korea as a part of a wider feminist wave that swept the country from the late 2010s to early 2020s, Jung told Mashable over email. There were heated discussions on and offline about misogyny, patriarchy, gender violence, and gender discrimination. Korea has a steep gender pay gap and was also ranked last among 29 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries for women's working environment. 

A major part of these discussions was about the uneven burden women face in terms of domestic labor and caregiving, oftentimes at the expense of personal aspirations, Jung said. Around this time, the term "no marriage" — roughly translated to "willfully unmarried" — began to become popular and widely used for women who chose not to marry. 

"4B is at the extreme end of the whole spectrum of women in South Korea who choose to stay single and childless," Jung said. The arguments for 4B, according to the women involved that Jung spoke to, come down to being tired of the patriarchal culture ingrained in the institution of marriage, societal pressure to marry and have children, and intimate partner violence (IPV) and lack of protection for victims. These women choose to boycott marriage and even romantic relationships with men until society and men change how they treat women.

With South Korea's #MeToo movement, IPV, and digital sex crimes gaining public attention in the late 2010s — coupled with the "no marriage" precedent in the country — there was momentum for 4B to settle and become more popularized, said sociology Ph.D. candidate at Yale University, Meera Choi, who studies the 4B movement.

There aren't definite numbers of how many women are in the 4B movement in South Korea. Those who identify as feminists in Korea are subject to harassment, bullying, career setbacks, and even job loss and violence, Jung said. So some 4B followers don't share this publicly.

Both Jung and Choi said that there is a broader discontent about marriage and childbearing among South Korean women beyond those who identify as 4B. Also, some women are choosing to be childless and single and not identify as 4B because they don't see it as a political statement.

"The core message of the 4B movement is a far more condensed, intense, and outspoken version of the frustration and grievances many ordinary South Korean women feel about the institution of marriage or patriarchal family culture in general," Jung said. 

Why are American women talking about 4B?

Donald Trump's win spurred discussion about 4B in the U.S., as did misogynistic gloating in its wake — such as white nationalist Nick Fuentes claiming, "Your body, my choice."

On social media, discussions of voluntary celibacy and being "boy sober" have emerged among heterosexual women in the last year. This is largely because of frustrations over modern dating and dating apps, as well as dissatisfaction with casual sex. This is also a consequence of politics, particularly the overturning of Roe v. Wade and misogynistic ideals pushed by manosphere influencers.

4B has been lumped into these discussions. Choi said there are inherent differences between American and South Korean feminism, however. An example she gave was American feminism focuses on individual desire and freedom, which is a more optimistic outlook. Choi said pessimism is more prevalent in Korea, and there's a greater focus on what makes someone a "good" feminist. 

Who can participate in 4B?

A flurry of discourse among American women started around who can and can't be 4B. Women began asking if they could be in 4B if they have a boyfriend, husband, and/or children.

"if u have a boyfriend or a husband u cannot be apart of the 4b movement [sic]," said X user @lilmswinehouse3.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

"we will never be free," said X user @bambilith along with a screenshot of a woman asking if she can participate in 4B "but still love [her] boyfriend."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Jung said similar arguments have sometimes appeared on South Korean social media and internet chatrooms since 4B emerged. "The arguments usually revolved around the question of whether a woman can be a true feminist if she is dating with a man, if she is married, thus 'selling out' to the patriarchal institution of marriage," Jung said. "And I think that this kind of debate inevitably happens when there is a social media-driven movement based on the deeply personal changes in a woman's everyday life."

Choi said that 4B has become almost an orthodox, separatist feminist movement in Korea. The question of who is the "better" feminist does come up. It's an insular group, with some 4B women only associating with each other because they are tired of discussions about men that their married friends might talk about, for example. 

"Among these women who adopt 4B as not just a practice, but almost an identity," Choi said. In her research, she has interviewed women who said they're not 4B because they don't follow the "rules," or they're not ready to not have relationships with men, or because they wear makeup and have long hair. The latter points refer to the "escape the corset" movement, where Korean women reject societal beauty ideals by cutting their hair and not wearing makeup in order to not look feminine.

Further, many 4B women in Korea are gender essentialists, meaning they believe men and women have intrinsic, biological differences. Many (but not all) are also trans-exclusionary. This seems to be in contrast with the swath of women who are talking about 4B in America, who appear to be primarily liberal (though some may be TERFS as well, trans-exclusionary radical feminists). 

Some women in Korea are critical of 4B — even if they don't engage in heterosexual relationships themselves — for gender and sexuality reasons, said Choi. Similar feminist separatist movements in the U.S. have also been criticized for excluding trans women. Sex strikes, in general, have occurred elsewhere around the world. In 2019, actor Alyssa Milano called for a sex strike following abortion restrictions. The concept has been criticized for the assumption that sex is about pleasing men, not women's desire, and for excluding LGBTQ people.

Will 4B spread in the U.S.?

It remains to be seen whether 4B or something similar will become widespread in the U.S. 

In the days since the election, it seems that the practices of 4B, but not the identity aspect of it, have spread on American social media. The context that some South Korean radical feminists hold gender essentialist beliefs may be lost stateside.

Aside from the lost context, Choi said it's difficult to say simplistically whether the movement gaining traction is a good thing or a bad thing. It's a reaction to the rising conservative thinking, but it could empower women to think about their lives beyond relationships with men. "I empathize and sympathize with these women's strategies and tactics," Choi said, and she's curious how it will unfold in the U.S.

"With Roe v. Wade gone and another Trump presidency on the horizon, the interest among American women in the 4B movement and what it stands for seems to indicate the growing sense of anger and hopelessness women feel about the patriarchal force in their society — a key factor that paved the way for the 4B movement in South Korea to begin with," Jung said. 

Despite cultural and political differences, the anger and frustration women feel in a patriarchal society are all too similar.

UPDATE: Nov. 13, 2024, 12:17 p.m. EST This article was updated to clarify Choi's comments.

Kamala Harris is brat. She is the horticulturist of the communal coconut tree that we did not just fall out of. Or just as much the harvester of the apple tree that we did spawn from, if you live by the philosophy of British icon Charli XCX. It's a Kamalaminomenon, in the words of skyrocketing pop star Chappell Roan.

When President Biden announced he'd be stepping off the campaign trail, he threw his support behind Vice President Kamala Harris, pegged as the best choice to replace him in the 2024 presidential election. It was clear that Harris' team was poised and ready for the shake-up. Almost immediately, the Biden/Harris HQ social media branding was transformed into the newly "chartreuse" green Kamala HQ, and a spot blasting the inspiring notes of Beyoncé's "Freedom" hit screens days later. She broke fundraising records in the first 24 hours after Biden's announcement. 

It seemed the presidential hopeful was making a new claim in direct response to what the Biden administration represented: An aging ticket, against a similarly aged opponent, that simply wasn't up to speed with what the under-34 vote demanded. Brats and femininomenons and coconut trees were Kamala's — sorry, Harris' — weapons. They were Harris' — no, Kamala's — new PR strategy.

Therein lies the problem (or one of them, anyway). Past the memes and pop music, how were supporters supposed to refer to the Vice President now? "Vice President" surely wasn't pulling in the viral likes. Is it "Kamala HQ"? Or the "Harris campaign"? Is "Momala," as Drew Barrymore tried to make happen, ever appropriate?

"Now is a good time to pay attention to the way people are referring to her. Are they referring to her as Kamala? If so, this is a common practice which de-legitimizes a woman in politics. Making a more casual and informal reference to the politician, makes them appear softer and less of a contender. We see this very commonly throughout politics in the United States," said Maggie Perkins in the caption of a viral TikTok video from July 22. Posting "Kamala 2024" is very different from "Harris 2024," said Perkins, drawing parallels to the use of acronyms like "AOC" and "RBG" and the marketing of the Stacey Abrams campaign. "If you think I am overreacting, I would encourage you to pay attention to the way that the media refers to her and the way that other politicians refer to her."

Non-Black creators flocked to the note, fearing that they were playing a part in the denigration of a potentially history-making campaign and forcing another woman of color into the trappings of respectability politics. As writer Charles M. Blow wrote in a New York Times opinion piece from May, following backlash to Barrymore's use of the term "Momala," "Black women and girls spend their entire lives in flight from a society insistent on de-individualizing and dehumanizing them, insistent on forcing them to fit broad generalizations... In this case, the stereotype at play is that of the mammy — the caretaker, the bosom in which all can rest, the apron on which we have a right to hang." 

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

But others online, predominantly Black women and women of color, felt differently. Several pointed to a 2020 YouTube video of actor Mindy Kaling and Harris making dosas together, in which Harris asked to be referred to as "Kamala." Her own campaign branding uses "Kamala," they pointed out, and, in many ways, it is a reclamation of her heritage to use her first name — especially as her own peers refuse to learn its proper pronunciation, decades into her political career. This was the least of our worries, they noted, and unhelpful virtue signaling. 

Popular creators, like childhood educator @mrs.frazzled, began referring their followers to a series of videos posted by Erika Harrison, also known as @blackgirlswhobrunch. "We call [politicians] by their most distinct name. With Kamala, her last name Harris is not very distinctive, but her first name is," Harrison said in one video. "Y'all are trying to defend her in this way that she never asked for, and it is ironic because she has always campaigned around her first name. I get what y'all are trying to do here, but I'm gonna be very direct here: White women, this is a waste of your time."

Harrison was one of nearly 44,000 Black women who attended a post-announcement virtual call with Win With Black Women earlier this week — a record-breaking meeting that saw nearly Black women organizers convening to game-plan the Harris campaign and discuss the path forward. 

In the span of just three days, online sentiments shifted: What started as a call to action that using the name "Kamala" was a form of systemic misogyny or even misogynoir, became the idea that using her first name is a sign of cultural and political respect. As it turns out, both ideas can be true.

Sexism on the campaign trail, and within elected government bodies, is still a pressing issue. A recent study of 60 women in politics conducted by Cosmopolitan and Melinda Gates' Pivotal Ventures showed that sexist biases pervaded things like committee assignments and even salary figures, as well outright harassment in the workplace. Ghida Dagher, CEO and president of New American Leaders, told Cosmopolitan, "Elected positions were created in the image of white landowning men. And these jobs continue to be arranged in a way that supports and reinforces that structure of power."

Republican Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance is currently under fire for saying "childless women," including Harris, should not be in politics.

View this post on Instagram

In 2015, the Atlantic referred to the trend of "mononymy" (or single name usage) as a trap created by an "informal age of unearned familiarity" in society at large, but especially among voters. For the author, political candidates, who were ever more inclined to use their first names (Take "Jeb" for Jeb Bush, "Bernie" for Bernie Sanders, even "Beto" for Beto O'Rourke), were worryingly shifting into marketing themselves like celebrities. But voters have long clamored for the personalization of their elected leaders (as well as their families), and politicians, both men and women alike, seem to view the "first" versus "last" decision as a question of marketing. Long before the aughts trend and the Harris campaign's "meme army," there was a lineage of acronyms (JFK, RFK) and nicknames ("Ike" and "Teddy") that feel, in many ways, just as informal and just as famous.

All politicians are making carefully crafted branding choices, handpicked for the electorate that will put or keep them in power. When made by women leaders, and especially women of color, those decisions may just have father reaching implications.

When former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ran in 2016, her "I'm With Her" and "Hillary for President" branding leaned into the familiarity, and femininity, of her first name; neither of these were the official slogan, "Stronger Together." There was debate even then: Was "Hillary" an important differentiator from her husband's presidential term, or yet another way to minimize her bid for leader of the free world?

Days after the announcement, Harris' and Clinton's campaigns were already under comparison. Parallels to other notable female historical figures trickled through headlines, including Shirley Chisholm, the first Black candidate for a major party nomination and first Black woman to run for the Democratic nomination. In 1972, Chisholm campaigned on just her last name and the slogan "Unbought and Unbossed." While much is the same, Harris is operating in a different world than Chisholm was, or even Clinton, one in which she is dividing her time between appealing to the honor-driven American masses and the fickle online contingent, not to mention her current duties as VP. 

And many worry that institutionalized sexism and the rise of white supremacy in mainstream politics still create insurmountable odds for a progressive female President.

Harris is a seasoned politician, backed by a galvanized supporter bloc, and she has clearly drawn her own boundaries: According to her campaign's brand, Kamala is fine; in fact it might help her chances at the polls, and Harris is the professional title she'll don on stage and in session. "Brat," according to her cheeky Charli XCX-themed posting, is also fair game, as her campaign kicks off and pundits scramble to understand the "youth vote." But personal monikers, like "Momala" and even "Auntie," in her words, are a step too far. 

The internet has received a pass on the discourse for now. The history of racism, sexism, and misogynoir in our country's politics, and the inequitable ways many of our nation's leaders have come into positions of power, aren't fodder for TikTok. And the name debate says more about our political landscape, now at the whim of online sentiments than ever before, than it does anything about the Harris campaign.

The phrase, "There's a censorship problem in the United States," is a homing beacon for political and social division — instantly casting a sense of wariness about who is uttering it and for what aim. But it's also true. From continued legislative attacks on inclusive education to digital "shadowbanning" of accounts in social media algorithms, content is often gate-kept from the masses. 

Frida Uncensored, a new website launched alongside the cult favorite maternity brand's new fertility products, addresses this ongoing issue from a different perspective: One that hopes to circumvent the censorship around conception, pregnancy, postpartum, and breastfeeding product education.  

Frida Uncensored provides Frida customers completely uncensored, anatomical tutorials for the use of their fertility and postpartum products — like a real-life version of the wholly unhelpful cartoons seen in the comically accordion-folded instruction packets for things like tampons and menstrual cups. The first set of videos, available today, feature adult entertainment actress and mom Asa Akira using tools like the at-home insemination kit and the Frida Mom peri bottle. Future videos will feature other real-life customers who can now apply to be a part of the Uncensored campaign. 

"Traditional and social media outlets are really effective tools to drive awareness that sites like this exist," Frida founder and CEO Chelsea Hirschhorn told Mashable. "That being said, we have a hard time even advertising using the word 'fertility.' We're at the whim of the algorithm, so to speak, and the algorithm needs a more human touch. The algorithm is not set up equitably." Recent reports have surveyed a consistently hostile advertising and content landscape for women's health brands, with social media algorithms routinely picking up words like sex, vagina, vulva, and period and flagging them as explicit content.

The videos were created on an all-women set and shot on an iPhone without scripts or specific direction in an intentional move to create a sense of reality and candidness. "We deliberately picked women who are mothers, who have gone through the physical experience themselves, to... speak authentically and candidly about their experience," she said. "We prepped them with the products. We shot it on an iPhone. We wanted to make as little post production filtering and editing as possible. We wanted it to feel like several women getting together to chat about what to expect."

Frida Uncensored isn't for everyone, literally and metaphorically. The opt-in "stripped-down resource" is age-gated, but not age-restricted, and Frida expects pushback from its usual trolls. 

Credit: Abbey Drucker / Frida

"More than a third of women say that they feel unprepared physically for the experience that they just had when it comes to pregnancy, labor delivery, and postpartum recovery. If we can help a large majority of those women eliminate that fear and anxiety in anticipation of that experience, the platform should and could speak for itself," said Hirschhorn.

The website is supported by nonprofit advocacy group the Center for Intimacy Justice, a collaboration that Hirschhorn explained is bolstering their own calls for change. In 2022, the Center for Intimacy Justice released a report detailing Meta's systemic rejection of reproductive and women's health advertisements — the company later revised their content policies, which had considered the ads explicit. Despite the change, the center found continued rejection of women's health content. In 2023, it filed a complaint and accompanying petition to the FTC asking the federal organization to take action, backed by Senators Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Mazie Hirono, and Congressman Adam Schiff.

"Frida’s Uncensored campaign confronts alarming gaps in access to accurate health information online that leave women and people of underrepresented genders uninformed and underprepared in profound aspects of their lives," wrote the center's founder, Jackie Rotman, in the website's announcement.

To be clear, it's not just Meta blocking this kind of educational and advertising content. Last year, TikTok was accused of removing educational posts about medical abortion. Last month, both Meta and Google were found to be suppressing abortion information in global majority countries. According to a 2024 survey by the social media-based CensHERship Campaign, 90 percent of organizations sharing women's health education online had experienced censorship of their posts. These restrictions exist despite growing concern about sexually explicit (often plain pornographic) advertising on the same sites. 

"My hope is that there's an opportunity for effective, appropriate content and advertising that is applied equitably — in furtherance of women's health and, in particular, the reproductive experience," said Hirschhorn. "None of this is sexual in nature."

Just this month, Instagram removed a Frida post advertising lactation pads which featured the image of a nipple. Another rejected ad for Frida insemination kits showed no overt nudity but rather the seemingly controversial phrase, "Just add sperm!" 

Credit: Instagram screengrab / Frida

Credit: Frida

As a decade-old brand, Frida has approached this environment head-on. "We're battle-tested," said Hirschhorn. They've campaigned for uncensored images of lactating, postpartum breasts. They've created campaigns to share real birth stories publicly — literally posting them on the sides of buildings. Tales of the brand being banned from using the word "vagina" on billboards and being blocked from advertising their products during the Academy Awards are part of company lore.

But even with years of experience and effort, Frida is still fighting the digital advertising Goliath. If just an illustrated outline of a breast is enough for Amazon to flag and remove a product listing, an example Hirschhorn gave with incredulity, the environment for informative, anatomically forward tutorials is suspicious at best, and outright antagonistic at worst. 

Amazon's algorithm flagged these cartoonishly pink breasts as sexually explicit content. Credit: Frida

Frida Uncensored skirts around traditional and social media, offering a new site unwedded to the restrictions of advertising algorithms and content curation.

"Censorship is such a polarizing word," said Hirschhorn. "But if we can allow the 'Girls Gone Wild' content, there has to be a way to filter age-appropriate, relevant content for women. We've been on a crusade to prepare women authentically and candidly, for many, many years. This is just sort of the next frontier for us: Taking matters into our own hands."

"For years, more than half of us have been excluded, unfavored, and bound by the fate of of our genders," a voice echoes in the opening seconds of In Bloom, a new film anthology released in celebration of Women's History Month. Various vignettes then appear on the screen, of women around the world. A girl holds up a sanitary pad. Another woman places figurines on a cake. A supposedly defiant teenage girl locks herself in the bathroom, refusing to come out.

The introduction to In Bloom is uplifting, colorful, and real, as are the short films that follow. Streaming on Paramount+, the anthology was born from a collaboration between MTV's Staying Alive Foundation and Paramount's Content for Change initiative, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bringing together five female filmmakers from five different countries, each short film lasts minutes, but probes some of the most pressing contemporary issues women face around the world.

The directors — Nicole Teeny, Priyanka Banerjee, Giuliana Monteiro, Voline Ogutu, and Dolapo 'LowlaDee' Adeleke — dissect subjects close to the cultures of their respective countries, ranging from period poverty to to unpaid care work to HIV stigma to child marriage.

A still from "Kifungo", starring Brenda Wairimu and directed by Voline Ogutu. Credit: MTV Staying Alive Foundation / Paramount.

Banerjee, an award-winning director from India, explains the five directors were selected by MTV's initiative and brought together into a virtual writers room in early February 2023. Their writing was bolstered with insights from lead researchers and academics who shed light on various themes of gender equality.

"The idea of each of our films was to speak about our topic but to make sure to speak about it from the lens of our culture," Banerjee explains in an interview with Mashable. "And while we're doing that, we're still keeping it universal so that the films can still connect to one another."

Each of the directors ventured to tell their own stories set in a distinctive cultural sphere and context, though all the films were shot over the course of a month in Johannesburg, South Africa. The stories float across genre, subject, and cause. There's a horror short based in Kenya that centers a young woman diagnosed with HIV; a comedy-drama about an American teenager who can't afford menstrual products; a drama about a Brazilian woman grappling with motherhood and mental health. The women are seen in their homes, cars, and classrooms, also in hazy house parties and busy hair salons. The issues are nuanced, as are their representations, and each speaks to a lesser-known aspect of the societies they cover.

A shot from "Alta", Priyanka Banerjee's short fim. Credit: MTV Staying Alive Foundation / Paramount.

"In Bloom connects the dots and brings to light 'silent pandemics' that affect not just women and girls, but our global communities," says Wame Jallow, executive director at MTV's Staying Alive Foundation, adding that each project "enable[s] thought-provoking reflections on gender."

Banerjee directed Alta, a Bengali drama film based in West Bengal, starring Mazel Vyas. Sitting at about eight minutes long, the short concerns a cocoon of issues impacting young women in India, examining the worth of life and themes of trust, innocence and betrayal. In the film, a teenage girl has locked herself away in the bathroom of her home, with her helpless father trying to get her out. But things aren't as they seem, which Banerjee conveys through language both heard and seen.

"There’s something a lot more sinister going on and a lot of the relationships are not as simple as they seem," Banerjee says.

A BTS shot from the short film "Maré", directed by Giuliana Monteiro. Credit: MTV Staying Alive Foundation / Paramount.

One of the connecting motifs between each film, Banerjee explains, is that of mirrors. In each film, the protagonist faces a transformative moment when she sees her face in a mirror. It is then that she grapples with the issue she is facing, one that is strikingly personal yet universal.

"Every single character in the films have a moment when they engage with themselves in the mirror, which becomes a pivotal moment for the character, where they decide: 'I’m going to do things differently', or 'I accept my fate', or 'I’m going to fight against what’s happening to me'", says Banerjee. The storytelling power of these moments is apparent in each film, when choices and circumstance come together and change, in ways both big and small, is fostered.

In Bloom is available to watch now on Paramount+ and Pluto TV.

Lyft's pledge to protect women and nonbinary riders will be tested nationwide today (Feb. 13), as the app announces its Women+ Connect safety feature is expanding to users across the country.

Women+ Connect is an opt-in setting for women and nonbinary riders that asks the app to prioritize matches with women and nonbinary drivers. It was designed in collaboration with the Human Rights Campaign, the sexual assault prevention campaign It's On Us, the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives (NAWLEE), and the National Sheriffs' Association Traffic Safety Committee.

Lyft first debuted the gender-specific safety preference in September, announcing a limited release in Chicago, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose. The Women+ Connect feature will now be available to even more Lyft users across the country, including in major cities like New York City, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Miami, Las Vegas, and Dallas.

Since its initial release, more than 7 million eligible riders have turned on the feature, Lyft reports. More than half of eligible women and nonbinary drivers are opted in to Women+ Connect, as well, and the company reports that these drivers keep the feature on for 99 percent of their driving time. Lyft says it has the highest satisfaction rate among drivers of any feature they've launched to date.

Lyft's introduction of Women+ Connect, and other safety tools like Smart Trip check-in and location sharing, are in response to cries for additional security from both drivers and riders.

"Lyft is rolling out an inclusive product at a time when so many companies are shying away from explicit inclusion of transgender and nonbinary people," wrote Jay Brown, chief of staff for the Human Rights Campaign, at the time of the Women+ Connect's release. "Women+ Connect was built with intentionality to make rideshare better for women and nonbinary riders. When rideshare is better for these folks, it's better for everyone, and we at HRC stand behind that."

To opt-in to Women+ Connect, visit the app's safety tools housed under account settings. Riders may also be prompted with a pop-up window upon opening the app — simply select "count me in" to use Women+ Connect.

According to TikTok, this is what you should know about us:

Elena drinks her morning tea out of a Moe's Books mug. She wears black Mary Jane Docs. She rotates between using a black Baggu shoulder bag and the smallest size Telfar. Her key is baby blue and reads "home" in white cursive on the head, because when she lost hers and her roommate replicated it, that was the only option. It hangs with an iridescent glass heart. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again by Katherine Angel, Ways of Seeing by John Berger, and Essays One by Lydia Davis are on her nightstand. 

Chase uses an Eleanor Roosevelt College graduate mug for her morning coffee. She wears platform checkered Vans. She treks around with a Sweet Pickles Bookstore tote bag every day, and her keychain sports a mushroom-shaped personal safety alarm, a mini Where the Wild Things Are Brooklyn Public Library card, a friendship lanyard her baby cousin made, and a carabiner. On her nightstand are these books: Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer, Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter, Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín, and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt.

The app neatly suggests that is everything you need to know about us "girls." But what did you learn about us? Do these items categorize us as femcels, clean girls, or teenage girls in our 20s?

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

What if, instead, we told you about our ex-boyfriends? Or our snack-filled dinners? What Taylor Swift era we are in? Would that get you closer?

Maybe you're actually asking about our trauma — no need to get into our intersecting identities or politics to understand "girlhood" here. 

Because in 2023 — the "Year of the Girl" or the "Girl-aissance" — more substantial facets of your personality are on the back burner. What matters most is a superficial identification with various products and experiences that supposedly define girlhood, a term that's come to apply to select aspects of womanhood. 

While media outlets and brands touted the "Year of the Girl," microtrends overlapped with continued attacks on reproductive justice, the platforming of abusers, global conflict — the list goes on — and trends billed as community-building were often just thinly veiled consumerism.

But that doesn't mean the "girl" moment lacks potential at its core. How do we turn these memes into action, for good? 

Mashable's tech reporter Elena Cavender and social good reporter Chase DiBenedetto discuss how "girl trends" captured the public consciousness, yet failed to build community or create change.

From the Dark Ages to the Girl-aissance

Chase: My FYP is currently full of gift guides, which is not that surprising around the holiday season. But these gift guides feel different: There's the "Literary it girl" gift guide, featuring oversized sunglasses and Ssense bathrobes, and the "Vanilla girl" gift guide, featuring Laneige lip masks and leg warmers. 

Elena: Just the phrase "vanilla girl" gives me girl-aesthetic fatigue. 

Chase: The videos are a kind of culmination of a year of aesthetic-driven girl trends, like the viral "girl dinner," a snack-only meal replacement turned meme. Others included "girl math" (a way to justify spending money on girly items), the "lazy girl" job (a low-effort job and synonym for "quiet quitting," both in response to burnout culture — there is no reason to gender this), and the "*insert random animal, food, or object* girl" starter packs. 

Elena: Notably, most of the year's girl trends did not have a "boy" counterpart, and if they did, no one cared in the same way. Another girlish trend was "delulu," a repackaging of delusional, used especially when related to courting men.

Chase: There was also a host of "girl summers," like the viral #TomatoGirlSummer (35 million views on TikTok) and #RatGirlSummer (30 million views) that seemed to embody "niche" aesthetics and quirky personality traits listed as defining charges for the warmer season. The Girl-aissance even went beyond these app-based trends, which you covered a lot, Elena.

Elena: The release of Barbie ushered in a year of girl media and added fuel to the fire of "reclaiming" the word "girlhood" to be applied to seemingly any gendered experience, even those that occur well into adulthood.

Often the girlhood celebrated online is white, clean, and, well, girly. As Refinery29 put it, "Not to be confused with 'womanhood,' 'girlhood' is the beaten-up ballet flats and pleated mini skirt to your mom’s mid-height mules and sensible knee-length silhouettes."

Chase: Pink was everywhere. Many online began revisiting old childhood and teen media on this path of reclamation as well. Olivia Rodrigo's sophomore album GUTS and shows like The Summer I Turned Pretty reignited a cross-generational obsession with being a teen girl — again. 

Elena: Many related to Barbie's journey in the film and how it replicated the harrowing end to girlhood — the song Billie Eilish wrote for the soundtrack, "What Was I Made For?" often accompanied these videos. The ending of Barbie even inspired two teenage girls to start a popular blog titled Girlhood. 

Chase: Videos to Eilish's song included emotional self-reflection on what it means to be a woman, or comparisons of their childhood personalities (i.e., toys) and dreams to those of their adult selves. Many spawned comment sections full of women and girls reminiscing on their lives, society, love, you name it. 

According to TikTok's end-of-year report, videos with #Girlhood racked up 1.5 billion views in 2023, almost a 4,000 percent increase compared to 2022.

Elena: Taylor Swift, who in her Time Person of the Year profile spoke about the recent validation of stereotypically feminine things like girlhood, love, breakups, and glitter, also had an incredible year. She invited fans to dress up as different eras in her life and also theirs at The Eras Tour and allowed for further connection to fans' girlhoods through her project re-recording her early albums and The Eras Tour movie. 

Chase: Videos of young girls and their mothers (or sisters or besties) connecting in movie theaters during screenings across the country became, for many, a symbol of feminine connection and resistance.

Elena: Even misogynistic, masculine characters became avatars for teenage girls. Succession's Kendall Roy became "babygirl," "girlfailure," and a "teenage girl." Even the titular Oppenheimer wasn't exempt from being "girlie-fied". But twisting up these male icons into girls doesn't change the reality of being a woman in 2023. 

Chase: "Women on TikTok know what they’re doing when they dub their meals 'girl dinners' or coin terms like 'hot girl walk,'" argued Rebecca Jennings for Vox. "They know that this year the highest-grossing movie and what may become the highest-grossing musical tour in history center on the very conundrum of women in their 30s experiencing their own versions of girlhood. They know that people will always care about what girls do, because girls are not yet women and therefore less easy to despise. Girls are more available for consumption, and girls have more available to them." Jennings equates this posting behavior to the marketing strategies of publishers, brands, and other companies who capitalize on society's youthful obsession. It's also a strategy that obfuscates the real demands of women.

The Girl-aissance was better on paper. 

Elena: Girl trends were trending, but in the background, horrible news continued.

Chase: With the 2022 repeal of federal privacy protections provided by Roe v. Wade, 2023 ushered in continued attacks on reproductive justice in the form of repressive state laws and threats on reproductive healthcare providers; more instances of criminal prosecution of pregnant people; and the rise of free speech- empowered anti-abortion organizations. Abortion fund networks around the country saw a decline in support versus the year prior, while Republican leadership pushed bills that restricted access to reproductive healthcare and gender-affirming care even further. 

According to the ACLU, more than 500 bills introducing LGBTQ censorship, anti-transgender policies, restrictive healthcare, and generally anti-LGBTQ policies entered 2023's legislative session, further reiterating gender essentialism. Online, advocates battled reported shadowbanning and demonetization for rallying around these causes. 

Elena: And it wasn't all glitter, sparkles, and girlhood on TikTok. Unrealistic beauty filters and the never-ending stream of videos urging young women to have 20-step skincare routines to prevent aging naturally coupled with the rise of weight loss drug Ozempic made scrolling social media a self-esteem gamble. 

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Chase: Online harassment saw a startling increase, too, with watchdog groups reporting that more than half of all Americans have experienced online harassment in their lifetimes, and 2023 witnessing a sharp increase in online hate on social media platforms. 

Elena: Not to mention that online spaces are particularly bad for actual girls. 

Chase: In opposition to the Girl-aissance, the internet witnessed a mainstream rise of  "manosphere" content, or the "online ecosystem of influencer content built around traditional masculine norms of self-sufficiency, dominance, toughness, and stoicism," Mashable's Rebecca Ruiz explains. Men made in the image of Andrew Tate, like TikTok comedian Matt Rife, still share overtly misogynistic videos to millions. Anti-feminist tradwife culture still dominates blogging spheres and trending TikTok videos. 

Elena: These trends on TikTok created an atmosphere where women felt responsible for the street (or subway) harassment they get in the summer months. "Subway shirts" or "outfit dampeners" went viral on the platform as a means to protect against harassment. As Mashable sex and relationships reporter Anna Iovine wrote, "The idea that wearing a bulky shirt will stop harassment, however, perpetuates myths: that clothes cause sexual harassment or assault, and that victims are to blame for what happens to them."

Support for survivors of domestic violence also backtracked, with Ezra Miller (who was accused on multiple counts of physical and emotional abuse) maintaining their starring role in The Flash and Jonathan Majors continuing his Marvel ventures despite domestic violence charges and an active trial. In other Hollywood news, the canceled HBO show The Idol made a mockery of abuse through its depiction of the the abuser as the victim.

Chase: AI also introduced newly pressing concerns for marginalized communities, including the proliferation of AI-powered deepfake porn and child sexual abuse materials. 

Elena: The cherry on top of a long year of regression for women was the fall of vital online women's spaces like the website Jezebel, the last of an era of feminist media.  

Barriers in organizing spaces around "girlhood"

Chase: Simultaneously, conservative groups, mens' rights activists, and right-wing organizers have shown a historic knack for turning memes and internet moments into political organizing (and propaganda) opportunities. In 2022, the revitalization of QAnon memes via Donald Trump's Truth Social spurred a new wave of enthusiasm for the conspiracy, alongside the manosphere content circulated through TikTok. This year, conservative boycotting was taken to a new level when the right reacted to a Bud Light campaign featuring trans creator Dylan Mulvaney.

To be fair, the internet has also been an effective tool and rallying agent for leftist causes in the past, like the Defund the Police movement and even more recent pro-Palestine organizing.

Elena: It was also a landmark year for labor, with the successful SAG-AFTRA, WAG, and the UAW strikes. 

Chase: That's true, and polls say that the vast majority of young people are pro-labor organizing. This year also saw extensive action by youth activists on climate change, gun reform, and LGBTQ safety. So why didn't the Year of the Girl (and its many memes and microtrends) act as impetus to interrogate the underlying themes of the posts?

Elena: When it comes to girl trends, we are stuck in the place of commiserating, rather than the community-building necessary to lead to collective action.

The radical potential of girl-centric internet moments is always curtailed by materialism and corporate greed. By nature of TikTok and brands' social media presences, these trends are quickly commodified and sold back to us, before we even have time to make sene of the trend. While a simple trend like girl dinner might not seem like a call to action, it hints at larger issues faced by women. But when trends like girl dinner are so rapidly adopted by brands, it encourages buying stuff instead of reflection.

Chase: Exactly what happened with the famed girl dinner and Popeyes' sides-only meal deal.

Elena: As a case study, not only did brands jump on the trend, but it was also co-opted by pro-anorexia spaces online — muddying what girl dinner really means. Having fun online turned into: Buy things! Eat less! Conform to white supremacist beauty ideals! 

Chase: Rather than acting as launch pads for action, most of these trends reduce the ideas of both womanhood and girlhood into very specific aesthetic and material-based experiences, as you mentioned, Elena, and then go on to reinforce only those kinds of aesthetics as valid for societal reflection — limiting their universal organizing potential almost immediately. 

Elena: Yes, they take a reductive and narrow view of girl / womanhood that tends to center not only whiteness, but specific displays of wealth. 

Chase: Moments of sincerity — or stabs at healing your inner child — shared via microtrends are turned into materialistic fodder, too. This constant attention on goods informs how women and girls post online generally, like the "what's on my side table" trend somehow indicating a woman's interests and personality. 

Elena: The trends also lend themselves to an infantilization and romanticization of struggle. Swift's 1989 (Taylor's Version) vault track "Now That We Don't Talk" birthed a TikTok trend to the lyrics:

"I don't have to pretend I like acid rock / Or that I'd like to be on a mega yacht / With important men who think important thoughts / Guess maybe I am better off now that we don't talk."

Primarily women shared the atrocious things they no longer have to pretend to like for their ex-boyfriends. The trend was a moment where women came together to share their stories, but rather than problematize these widespread experiences in pursuit of a new approach to dating men, it normalized this awful treatment. 

This sort of TikTok moment happens practically every time Swift releases or rereleases a song. There have been so many opportunities for widespread productive conversations inherent to the trend that just don't happen. 

Chase: Normalizing instead of problematizing is a great way to put it. And if there's no problem, we don't have to worry about solutions... yet. 

So what should the girlies do?

Chase: Social movement scholars have a lot of theories on how best to utilize the internet for information gathering and collective action, so I won't pretend to be the expert here. But I do think these heavily identity-centered memes should be used more intentionally. 

Elena: Leftist groups like NYC for Abortion Rights have taken to utilizing popular memes like the Sylvanians, Barbie, etc. to communicate news and action items to their followers. Framing this vital information in popular imagery and aesthetics makes it fun and highly shareable. 

View this post on Instagram

Chase: In addition, last year's #Bimbocore resurgence proposed hyperfemininity as a mode of liberation for many, although it has since been challenged by the rise of tradwife aesthetics, which equate traditional womanhood with purity and tranquility. 

In Swift's TIME interview, she equated 2023's rise in popularity of girl trends, aesthetics, and art as a similar win for feminism. "What has existed since the dawn of time?" she proposed. "A patriarchal society. What fuels a patriarchal society? Money, flow of revenue, the economy. So actually, if we’re going to look at this in the most cynical way possible, feminine ideas becoming lucrative means that more female art will get made. It’s extremely heartening.”

But equating social justice wins with how much money flows in the direction of "girls" is only exacerbating the problems we mentioned above — and girl microtrends are funneling cash to corporations.

Elena: At a time when TikTok is increasingly becoming a search engine for young people, we need to be taking conversations on the platform seriously and utilizing it to create change.

Chase: Right. What's 2024 going to be the year of?

A preteen girl is at a unique moment in her life.

The spark that is her potential grows more intense, yet she'll have to fight against gender norms that threaten to diminish it.

Those expectations might convince her to sacrifice ambition for popularity, shame her for rejecting feminine beauty standards, or negatively affect her mental health. There are countless ways she'll feel pressured to hide or change her authentic self.

Most adolescent children, regardless of gender, feel that tension, but girls often face distinct challenges. Research shows, for example, their self-esteem plummets during adolescence compared to boys.

"Girls are at their fiercest and most authentic prior to puberty," says Rachel Simmons, author of four books on girlhood and cofounder of Girls Leadership, a national nonprofit that provides training, education, and workshops to girls, nonbinary youth, and gender-expansive youth, and the adults who support them.

While there's growing awareness of what girls experience during adolescence, particularly when it comes to social media and comparison to others, Simmons says navigating these dynamics has only become more complex.  

"It's not that we've really updated our expectations of girls – it's that we've added to the old expectations," she says. 

Simmons believes that girls face "unrelenting pressure" to excel at everything they do, a sense that has become "inextricably intertwined" with pleasing those around them. This is partly due to the competitiveness of college admissions, according to Simmons.

Indeed, new survey data published by Ruling Our eXperiences (ROX), a nonprofit research organization dedicated to promoting confidence in girls, found that more than three-quarters of respondents felt they were going to "explode" due to pressure. They named grades, school, friendships, and family issues as their top stressors. (The survey collected answers from 17,502 fifth through 12th grade girls, between 2022 and 2023.)

Simmons, who wasn't involved in the research, notes that girls are dedicating a significant amount of their time to managing their relationships via digital technology and social media. That means keeping up with notifications, group chats, and their own social media posts, often at the expense of sleep, hobbies, and physical activity. 

Thanks to social media and other perceived obligations, like getting into a four-year college, Simmons says many American girls are consequently experiencing "role overload" or "role conflict." This may also look different depending on a girl's characteristics, like her race or ethnicity. A Black girl, for example, may experience "adultification bias," a phenomenon in which Black girls are seen as older and less in need of nurturing.  

Parents, caregivers, and adults who regularly interact with preteen girls can prepare girls for adolescence by teaching them vital skills early on. These include honest communication, assertive behavior, self-compassion, and developing a positive relationship with their body. It's equally important for girls to learn how to use these skills in the context of social media, which can affect their development in positive and negative ways. 

Talking about these and other issues, says Simmons, should also be an exercise in learning about a girl's interests and who inspires her. Draw from pop culture examples after you've asked about, for example, her favorite song, celebrities, and YouTube videos.

"That's your best way to get an education and win some love and respect from your kid in the process," says Simmons.

Here are seven skills to consider teaching your daughter by the time she turns 13.

1. How to respect and express her feelings

One popular stereotype portrays girls (and women) as in touch with their feelings and naturally good at communicating them. That idea, however, has a harmful corollary: When girls and (and women) are overcome by their emotions, they can become incapable of making decisions.

We so frequently assume that girls and emotions are a natural pairing, for better or worse, that we neglect to actually teach girls emotional intelligence. That skill, says Simmons, means having the ability to describe and convey the full range of human emotion. But when girls are taught to value being happy and liked, they often suppress or can't acknowledge their more difficult experiences.

More than two-thirds of ROX survey respondents said they withheld their thoughts or opinions because they want to be liked. To combat this impulse, adults need to show girls how to "flex the muscle of expressing their strongest feelings," says Simmons. They can do that by modeling their own emotions with an expansive vocabulary using words like happy, nervous, excited, scared, angry, frustrated, and confused.

Parents can also "authorize" their daughters' emotions by honoring their experiences as opposed to diminishing or questioning them.

"When your girls express authentic emotions — even if they're difficult — you take them seriously," says Simmons, "you don't deny them or challenge them."

Black girls and girls of color can encounter specific barriers to self-expression, says Dr. Marketa Burnett, an assistant professor of Human Development and Family Sciences & Africana Studies at the University of Connecticut. While they may, in fact, know how to express themselves, they may also have to consider and navigate how their self-expression will be interpreted by peers and adults, especially in school settings. 

Burnett, who studies Black girls' identity development, says they may be reprimanded in school more frequently than their white peers for behavior that teachers or staff define as defiant or disrespectful when exhibited by a Black student. 

"What does that teach Black girls about their ability to speak up?" asks Burnett. "We're almost telling Black girls they have to be silent." 

Burnett notes that Black girls in education have been criminalized and urges schools to adopt policies that don't inflict disproportionate disciplinary measures on them. She adds that encouraging self-expression among Black girls and girls of color will require self-reflection from the adults around them to "ensure that all girls have the opportunity to thrive in all settings, and that's just not the reality currently." 

2. How to feel self-compassion

It's easy to be one's most unforgiving critic, no matter what gender. But Simmons says that girls get a lot of messages that it's important to please others. So when they experience a setback, it often feels like letting someone else down.

Research shows that adolescent girls may be exposed to more interpersonal stress than boys. That makes them more likely to ruminate on negative feelings, which puts them at greater risk for depression. Girls may also expect perfection from themselves, which means that minor disappointments may feel like catastrophe. 

To help prevent this cycle of distress, Simmons recommends parents teach their daughters how to deal with failure: "What we want is for girls to have the capacity to move through a setback without beating themselves up."

Simmons says that it's particularly important for adults to show girls how to be "comfortable with discomfort." That skill can help them avoid overvaluing happy and positive emotions. Simmons emphasizes that adults should model what it's like to fail and keep trying. 

At the same time, girls' activities and interests should be self-directed instead of prescribed by her adults and caregivers. Simmons says girls need the freedom to explore and fail on their own, with appropriate — instead of overbearing — adult support.

Girls should also learn how to relate to themselves and practice self-compassion in a moment of crisis. It's important that instead of criticizing herself harshly, a girl should learn how to focus on the universality of disappointment and treat herself kindly. By realizing that others share that experience, she'll be better prepared to treat herself compassionately and develop resilience.

Concepts like self-compassion and kindness are universal, but all girls need to hear and see multifaceted examples of wellness to believe they can develop related skills, says Burnett. 

She adds that while self-compassion is stereotypically portrayed as an individual act, girls may benefit from the opportunity to practice the skill with their peers, in community settings, or at home, says Burnett. 

"Wellness doesn't have to look one way," she adds.  

3. How to develop a positive relationship with her body

Lost in a sea of selfies and TikToks, where the lines between self-objectification and self-empowerment are frequently blurry, girls might not know how to view themselves beyond a brand or object of desire.

One way to help them develop a holistic, positive relationship with their body is to introduce them to sports. Physical activity gives them an opportunity to see their bodies as capable of strength and stamina, rather than being defined by appearance only. Research published by ROX shows that sports can positively affect a girl's self-confidence.

For more Social Good stories in your inbox, sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter today.

But even girls who feel physically capable and confident might still feel ashamed of their body and its sexuality. Simmons recommends talking with girls about their bodies from toddlerhood. Parents should know and use the right names for genitalia and do their best to "represent sex as a healthy, beautiful experience that should be had with joy and consent." And yes, that means talking about what consent means early on and emphasizing that a girl's body belongs to her alone.

Parents who are uncomfortable discussing sex and the body communicate those feelings to their daughter. 

"When girls feel uncomfortable with their bodies," says Simmons, "they can also disconnect from how they are really feeling, and worry more about how someone else is feeling, or what they want, instead."

4. How to learn from friendships

Girls are frequently told that friendships are paramount, and that may be why they can be so singularly focused on those relationships. 

But we shouldn't take female friendship for granted, says Simmons. Relationships help girls learn to assert themselves, compromise, and set boundaries.

Parents should view friendships as an opportunity to show girls what healthy relationships look like and how they can relate to others and themselves.

One example might be helping your daughter respond when her friend doesn't save a seat for her on the swings. That could start with asking her what choices she has in the situation and working with her on role-playing an assertive response. Encouraging her to communicate honestly and reasonably assert herself provides her with skills that she'll need to push for a raise as an adult, says Simmons.

5. How to deal with bullying

No parent wants to learn his or her child is being bullied — or has become the bully.

Dealing with either situation is challenging because it involves so many factors: communication, social dynamics, and a parent's own emotional intelligence. Digital bullying adds another layer of complexity.

"Girls will bully because they don’t have the tools to deal with their feelings," says Simmons. And when girls are bullied, they often feel powerless to stand up for themselves. 

In both cases, Simmons recommends making sure they ask for help from an adult as needed and practice assertive but respectful communication. She admits, though, that approach won't always work, so girls must know when to step away from a situation that is "unkind" and "unethical."

These are critical skills to teach a girl, but many parents don't even possess them. Some will encourage bullying behavior or intervene every time their daughter complains about a difficult interaction. Parents, says Simmons, have to accept responsibility for their own role: "They have to set the tone early on for what's OK in relationships and not."

Girls who experience racialized bullying can benefit specifically from parental or caregiver support that affirms their beauty and self-worth, says Burnett. 

In her research on Black girls' identity development, preteen and teen girls have told Burnett that they struggled with racialized bullying that occurred in elementary school but felt better when their caregivers identified the physical features they were bullied for as beautiful. In that scenario, a parent might look in the mirror with their child and name what is special about both of their appearances.

6. How to embrace her gender identity and expression

Dr. Danielle Ramo, a clinical psychologist and chief clinical officer of BeMe Health, a platform supporting teen mental health, says that ideas and conversations about gender identity and expression have expanded greatly over the past decade. 

Despite right-wing attacks on both gender identity and expression, there is generally improved openness to how young people express their gender, and what it means to be a girl, says Ramo, who has worked with LGBTQ+ youth. 

The message that girls hear more frequently today than in previous generations is that gender is more than binary, and that their expression of that identity can fluctuate based on a broad spectrum of masculinity and femininity. 

Ramo says it's important for parents to understand or educate themselves about this distinction first and then talk to their daughters about both gender identity and expression. Parents can help girls embrace their identity by encouraging them to be confident in who they are. Instead of encouraging them to dress "like a girl," parents should applaud them for choosing what feels right. 

Ramo says it's normal for preteens and teens to try out different types of expression as they mature. Parents, caregivers, and adults should expect some degree of fluidity from their children as they test their own boundaries. 

This may not feel simple or straightforward in states or communities where nonstereotypical gender identity and expression is under attack by lawmakers or activists. Yet Ramo says it's critical for parents to accept their children unconditionally. 

Research shows growing up in an accepting home is a bulwark against the negative effects of being targeted or bullied for one's sexuality, gender identity, or gender expression. 

"The best gift parents can give is believing and respecting as valid who they say they are, at any given time," says Ramo.

7. How to lead

There is no shortage of powerful female role models. Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, for example, spent the summer selling out stadiums with messages of acceptance and kindness. They made billions of dollars while they were at it, too. 

Despite the massive appeal of figures like these megastars, girls still find it difficult to develop leadership skills amidst the stigma of being called aggressive. The ROX survey found that while 59 percent of girls reported that they like to be in charge, more than half said they were afraid to lead because they feared being labeled as "bossy." 

It's even harder to become a leader when they don't know how to communicate their honest feelings, assert themselves, practice self-compassion, handle bullying, or embrace their identity. That's why it's so important for a girl to cultivate a diverse set of life skills.

There are, however, specific strategies parents can use to encourage their daughter to take a leadership role. Fathers who evenly share household duties are more likely to raise daughters who believe they have a broader range of career options. Mothers can set their own example by taking on a leadership role at work or in a volunteer capacity.

Simmons says that sports is another way to teach leadership skills to girls; it's a "pre-professional environment" that can help them succeed well past the season's end.

"There's a very powerful and painful unwritten communication code among girls that you're not supposed to say what you really think to someone's face and you're not supposed to promote yourself," says Simmons. "Sports perverts all of that; they can do that and be rewarded for it."

These important skills aren't easy to master, but the more chances a girl has to practice them under the guidance of a trusted adult, the more likely she'll feel confident and self-assured as a teenager.

This story, originally published in December 2015, was updated in October 2023.

If you're still stuck paying sales tax on menstruation products — which, reminder, are essential health purchases — it's time you got your money back. 

Beginning on Oct. 11, individuals can be reimbursed for sales taxes on any purchase of August, Cora, LOLA, The Honey Pot, Rael, Here We Flo, Saalt, or DIVA products in states where menstruation products are taxed. All they have to do is log their receipts. 

The Tampon Tax Coalition, as the brand collective is called, is a commitment by the eight period care companies to work towards abolishing luxury taxes applied to menstruation products, often called the tampon tax or a "pink tax," and recategorize these products as essential goods. August started a brand-specific #TamponTaxBack initiative in May to reimburse individuals for any tax paid on purchases of August tampons and pads.

According to global estimates, the average menstruating person will spend about $1,773 on period products in their lifetime. The average American will pay between $100 and $225 in tampon taxes over their lifetime.

Nadya Okamoto is the cofounder of August and founder of PERIOD., a global youth-focused nonprofit started in 2014 to address period poverty (or a limited or inadequate access to menstruation products and information due to financial or social barriers) and end menstruation stigma through advocacy, education, and service, including the distribution of menstruation products to grassroots organizations. 

"Things like the tampon tax exist because of this misunderstanding or lie that period products are nonessential goods," Okamato explained. "And so the more we talk about periods openly, and make clear that period care is absolutely essential, the better."

Supporting new initiatives to tackle the tampon tax head-on is a long history of global advocacy and education. PERIOD. hosts an annual global event known as Period Action Day every second Saturday of October. This year, on Oct. 14, the organization is calling on supporters to virtually donate or join a local product drive with the goal of accumulating one million menstruation products for communities in need. 

"I’m lucky enough to have worked in this space for going on 10 years," Okamoto told Mashable. "When I started this work at 16, the tampon tax was in 40 states, and now we are down to 21. There is more awareness about the issue of period poverty and stigma, and every year we make progress with research on period-related issues like endometriosis and uterine fibroids. I have more liberty posting and talking about periods on social media than I ever used to. And more national legislation passed in COVID relief bills around getting health savings accounts and flexible savings accounts to cover period care, as well as a more gender-inclusive period discussion."

View this post on Instagram

But Okamoto says there are still hurdles on the path toward gender equity. "Progress has definitely happened, but in many ways there are continued barriers — literally anything regarding reproductive rights. With Roe vs. Wade being overturned, it ignited and made a lot of anti-choice rhetoric much more visible. Bills like HB 1069 in Florida are some of the most aggressive restrictions on sex education and period conversation."

The Tampon Tax Coalition thus joins an established movement of advocates, nonprofits, and even companies attempting to address gender-based discrimination, reproductive access, and period poverty. 

Want to more Social Good stories in your inbox? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter today.

Period Law, for example, is a coalition of volunteer attorneys from around the country working to advance state and federal period equity policies. The organization successfully worked for the repeal of tampon taxes in New York and Michigan, and launched its own Tampon Tax Refund activation in 2019. According to Period Law, $80.9 million in sales tax revenue has been collected from tampon taxes among the remaining states. 

Despite an uphill battle against political attacks on reproductive and gender equality, there's still a sense of optimism among those working in this space, especially as reproductively regressive states have moved to address instances of the "pink tax." On Sept. 1, a new Texas law went into effect that eliminated sales tax on "feminine hygiene products," including menstrual pads, tampons, and menstrual cups. 

"Talking about periods also involves so many intersectional issues around our bodily health and identity. The more we talk about having the education, empowerment, and resources to take care of your health," said Okamoto, "that is directly tied to reproductive health."

How to get your tampon taxes back 

"The coalition mirrors the August model to a tee," Okamoto explained. 

Those looking to get reimbursed for tampon taxes need just two things: a receipt of purchase and a valid Venmo or PayPal account.

The coalition will reimburse taxes on all eligible purchases from third-party retailers in the U.S., including Target and Walmart. Visit the Tampon Tax Back website to submit a receipt within 10 days of purchase. Individuals will be refunded within 24 hours.

Right now, 21 states still charge a tax for menstruation products:

• Alabama

• Arizona

• Arkansas

• Georgia

• Hawaii

• Idaho

• Indiana

• Kansas

• Kentucky

• Mississippi

• Missouri

• North Carolina

• North Dakota

• Oklahoma

• South Carolina

• South Dakota

• Tennessee

• Utah

• West Virginia

• Wisconsin

• Wyoming

"We're actually doing something about the tampon tax: putting our money where our mouth is, even though we're not even the one charging the tampon tax," said Okamoto. "We're just reimbursing it — to take a stand against it."

This story has been updated to reflect Tampon Tax Coalition reimbursement eligibility for purchases made at Walmart.

Despite what may feel like an endless wave of technological advancements, from AR to AI, women and adolescents around the world still face a global digital divide. For young girls especially, the access problem runs much deeper than hardware or cost, as a new global report documents continued gender-based attitudes that are keeping girls off phones and offline.

The 2023 Girls & Mobile report was compiled by Girl Effect, an international nonprofit using inclusive media and technologies to address the gender divide, working in collaboration with Vodafone Americas Foundation, the charitable arm of global telecommunications provider Vodafone; international children's humanitarian organization UNICEF; and education activist Malala Yousafzai's nonprofit, the Malala Fund. Prior Girl Effect research has explored how mass media campaigns co-designed by youth can drive routine vaccines, and how carefully designed chatbots can help girls feel empowered to take action about their health. 

Girl Effect released its first Girls & Mobile report in collaboration with Vodafone in 2018, presenting results of a global survey of 3,000 adolescent girls that found that adolescent boys were 1.5 times more likely to own a phone than girls. 

"For girls, access is much more diverse and colourful than simply whether they 'have' or 'have not' got a phone. Access is often transient, and diverse ownership, borrowership, and sharing practices are flourishing… When girls have less access to mobile, they have fewer opportunities to learn to use mobiles in ways that benefit them — and they perceive the phone as being more dangerous than girls who have more access."

The 2023 report takes a wider look at this global digital landscape, surveying more than 10,000 young girls from nine low- to medium-income countries. It focuses on a network of what the nonprofit calls TEGAs, or Technology Enabled Girl Ambassadors, who are trained to use Girl Effect's house-designed mobile app and act as market researchers and advocates for their communities. 

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

While the latest data shows overall technology access increased since the 2018 edition, a variety of social barriers still impede a fully digitally connected youth population. The Girls & Mobile report also found that a widely-held fear of increased vulnerability for some youth populations — rightfully inspired by growing concerns for the treatment of girls online — might be negatively shaping girls' self-perception and holding them back. 

Access increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, but so did costs

Across all adolescents surveyed by Girl Effect's research team, 50 percent reported receiving greater access to mobile phones and internet during periods of lockdown, with 47 percent reporting continued access as lockdowns ceased. 

However, another third of respondents reported cost barriers that prevented them from going fully online alongside their peers. In the United States, the pandemic's exacerbation of the digital divide among working Americans and school-age children was due in part to a lack of technology investment among lower income and rural communities across the country — in Girl Effect's findings, rising prices for technologies and mobile internet data around the world also added to gaps between digitally-connected and digitally-deprived youth, and made them more at risk for exclusion. 

According to the report, 40 percent of adolescents reported that their mobile phone access is dependent on having to borrow or share devices, commonly from their parents or caregivers.

While permission-based use of phones overseen by parents and family members is often the go-to monitoring tool for worried parents, many young people reported they still use phones in secret, borrowing from friends and digitally-connected peers.

The gender divide still exists

Girls and boys expressed equal interest in having devices and social media accounts, but access to mobile phones and the internet is still universally unequal, the report found. 

Girl Effect's TEGA network in countries including Ethiopia, India, Rwanda, and Tanzania found that 50 percent of girls surveyed had exclusive ownership of a phone, compared to 58 percent of boys. Only 66 percent of girls reported having ever used a smartphone, while 78 percent of boys were familiar with smart devices through firsthand use. 

Adolescent girls also were found to face higher cost barriers, especially during periods of lockdown, as many were prevented from finding their own jobs or independent income sources. TEGA researchers found that phone access was most commonly dependent on parent permission after completing chores and school assignments. And this kind of requirement disproportionately affects girls in the home: According to prior UNICEF research, girls are assigned a significantly higher portion of housework compared to boys. Additionally, technology access is increasingly tied to gender norms around female modesty and sexuality, Girl Effect reported.

"This sends a clear message to girls that phones are 'not for them,'" the report articulates, "an attitude that can be traced to some of the core social factors contributing to the gender digital divide."

Broadly, technology access is a continued worry among women's safety and education advocates. Girls & Mobile points to a June report from the GSMA, a nonprofit network of mobile network operators and businesses, and a recent UN Women brief, which indicate slowing tech adoption among women globally and complex, gendered impacts of technology and gender-based violence. 

Assuming girls are more vulnerable than others is exacerbating the divide

As Girl Effect outlines, these particular women- and girls-focused worries obscure a larger social process at work, one that places the burden of protection on caregivers who often lack consistent tech access and education. This, the report finds, produces digital barriers based on expectations, gender norms, and offline permissions assigned to adolescent girls by parents, their peers, and even themselves — first outside digital spaces, and then online.

Despite shared risk of online scams and harassment regardless of gender — and girls being overwhelmingly more vigilant about online dangers and making use of privacy tools more often than boys — the report found that girls are still told they are "less competent" and more at risk when using the internet. 

"Girls are internalizing what they are being told (that they are 'vulnerable') and acting in a way that reinforces these gender norms and limits their own online usage," the report states. "Girls being told — and then believing — that they are vulnerable can have much broader consequences and impacts on a girl's self-confidence and self-esteem, and directly impacts her ability to use mobile devices to access the information and connections she needs to support her physical and mental health, education, and future opportunities."

A majority of youth surveyed reported only having access to borrowed or secret devices, with borrowed phones most commonly lent from parents — borrowed phones often come with greater restrictions and monitoring that limit their use. Girl Effect says this can impede girls' access to phones because of a widely held belief that girls will "get themselves into trouble" online. The majority of adolescents who reported having secret devices were girls, most likely due to what Girl Effect calls "intensive gatekeeping" and lower mobile access more broadly.

Around 82 percent of parents and 65 percent of girls believe that young women are more likely to "get themselves in trouble" if they have their own mobile phone. A fifth of digitally-connected girls surveyed by Girl Effect impose self-enforced restrictions on their internet use.

"They are being told they are 'vulnerable,' 'less competent,' and unable to protect themselves online," wrote Girl Effect CEO Jessica Posner-Odede. "This offline sexism is not just preventing girls from accessing today's digital devices; it is shaping their own beliefs about their ability to participate and engage online. We can't bridge the digital divide with devices and access alone; we need to start by articulating and addressing the deeper social and structural challenges girls experience everyday."

For more Social Good stories in your inbox, sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter today.

Generational and educational barriers heavily influence access

The gender divide also exists for how young people use their phones. Girls, on the whole, reported using devices primarily for educational purposes, including attending online classes and completing schoolwork, while boys reported significantly higher recreational uses for their phones, like playing online games and posting to social media. Girls were also less likely to report freely expressing themselves while on the internet.

According to researchers, "This in many ways reflects the assumptions and realities girls face when accessing these devices: that girls should use only phones for more educational and 'meaningful' purposes compared to boys."  

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

While girls also reported a greater awareness of the positive potential of online education and phone use beyond social connections, the report argues that generational differences among parents and children are continuing to widen the digital divide. Children, according to survey responses, often absorb and repeat their parent's beliefs on online behavior (such as the worry of becoming "addicted" to the internet, encountering troublesome content, or not feeling competent enough to use phones), while simultaneously finding ways to get around these restrictions.

"We can close the gender digital divide, but we need to demystify the internet and address the root causes and social norms preventing girls from equal access. By working with youth and their parents on the solutions, we can transform how we create products and ensure a more equal and inclusive digital future for all,” wrote Posner-Odede.

Fixing the digital gender divide 

The Girls & Mobile report includes recommendations for creating a more equitable digital environment beyond simple device access. Tech designers and advocates, for example, can and should create content assuming youth are sharing or borrowing devices, including clear log-in and log-out instructions, multi-factor authentication, and easy functions to allow youth to not leave a digital footprint on borrowed phones. Similar design additions are used often among safety organizations, such as "quick escape" buttons for visitors of websites with information on domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, or, most recently, abortion.

Mobile phone companies, the report advises, can make it easier for youth to share phones or SIM cards, making internet access more simplified for borrowed devices. 

For girls specifically, the report argues for continued expansion of education and online learning programs, which act as common gateways for girls to access mobile devices, in concert with a social shift in how communities talk about girls' safety. The researchers argue that by perpetuating the stereotype that girls are less competent online than boys, girls are more likely to self-censor, not fully participate, and to have their access limited by others and by themselves.

"This report serves as a strong reminder that we are living in a critical moment of history," Posner-Odede concludes. "We can decide how this new digital world evolves and operates. We can choose whether this space is open and inclusive or, like the public domains of our past, it remains gendered and inaccessible to women."

Barbie summer is transitioning into Barbie fall, and the residents of "Barbieland" are getting some new friends. Launching today (Sept. 6), Barbie's 2023 Career of the Year collection unveils four new Barbies working in the world of sports, aimed at empowering the next generation of female leaders in the industry.

The Career of the Year collection is an annual special release that features dolls in "culturally relevant and aspirational roles in fields where women are underrepresented," Mattel explains in its press release. According to the company, Barbie has had more than 250 careers.

"Women have been working towards greater gender equality in sports for decades, but still in 2023, women only make up 25 percent of U.S. college level head coaches and only 30 percent of global sports participants are women," Mattel writes. "This year, our Career of the Year lineup highlights four careers in the sports industry...to encourage girls to pursue involvement in sports and increase opportunities for girls as the next generation of empowered women."

The 2023 line highlights opportunities that aren't just on the field or court, including a general manager (complete with official ID badge), referee (equipped with headset, whistle, and flag), coach (holding her playbook and megaphone), and sports reporter (carrying her own microphone and notebook).

Credit: Mattel

Credit: Mattel

Mattel is also partnering with Voice In Sport, an online community and advocacy group for women and girls in sports, offering research, mentorship, and other resources.

On Sept. 12, Mattel and Voice in Sport will host a 45-minute virtual mentoring session on "Building a Career in Sports," featuring Voice in Sports founder and former executive Stef Strack and Dr. Jen Welter, the first female coach in the NFL and the first woman to play running back in men's professional football. The event will be hosted by Pepper Persley, a 12-year-old sports journalist and host of the Dish with Pepper web series. The free session is open to girls ages 12-13.

The dolls come at the same time women's sports are witnessing a rise in popular attention, as well as long-awaited legal wins for equity across sports. Just last month, the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup sold more than 1.7 million tickets and set new records for the tournament's broadcast and digital viewership.

On TikTok, women's sports have found an impressively vocal market of young viewers and enthusiasts, spurring accounts dedicated to game highlights and influencers who have committed to documenting the world of women's sports. Last week, women's tennis took over many users' For You Pages after U.S. tennis player Coco Gauff called out unfair treatment during a U.S. Open match.

Elsewhere, women's sports games are seeing record-breaking in-person attendance numbers, including an astonishing 92,000-person turnout for a recent University of Nebraska women's volleyball match. The previous U.S. record was set in 1999 at the Women's World Cup final in Pasadena, California.

At the same time, however, women's sports professionals still face excessive negative backlash, and advocates and professionals are still waging a battle for equal pay across all sports.

Barbie joins the conversation in her own way, using the power of representation to inspire the next generation of women in the sports industry and honor those who are speaking up to make a difference today.

The Women in Sports Career of the Year lineup is available on Mattel Shop for $49.99 starting today.

Want to feel more knowledgable about the patriarchy and how it impacts our lives and the society in which we live? The Pocket Guide to the Patriarchy by journalist Maya Oppenheim might just be the book for you.

Oppenheim is Women's Correspondent at The Independent and the only women's correspondent at a UK news outlet. The book covers a broad range of topics, including sex work, abortion rights, sexual violence, the criminal justice system, policing, women's health, the far right, to name a few.

Here's an extract from The Pocket Guide to the Patriarchy — described by actor Olivia Colman as "a vital book" — published by Trapeze on Aug. 31 2023.

What do spy-cam porn, upskirting, deepfake porn, cyberflashing, sextortion, and revenge porn all have in common? For one, they are all cybersex crimes. Secondly, they are all words that have only entered our vernacular in recent years.

What are cybersex crimes?

Cybersex crimes are insidious, eerily perverse and, for the most part, committed by complete strangers through technology that is hard to trace. These crimes can involve installing hidden cameras in changing rooms, public toilets or tanning salons, snapping photos or recording videos up a stranger’s skirt, as well as fiddling around on Photoshop doctoring images of celebrities to make them look like porn stars in explicit sexual positions, or sending unsolicited sexual images to strangers.

And cybersex crimes aren’t just committed by people you wouldn’t recognise in the street; it is likely you would know the person who perpetrates so-called revenge porn (a phrase I do not like for reasons I will soon explain) against you. While most of these repellent crimes might feel beyond the bounds of possibility for many, they nevertheless happen more often than many would assume.

What's revenge porn?

Let’s start with revenge porn, as it is likely to be one of the most prevalent issues on the list of cybersex crimes – which, to be clear, is not comprehensive but covers six key issues in this shadowy, sinister realm. In its simplest terms, revenge porn involves revealing private sexual images or videos online or offline, without first gaining the consent of the person they concern, with the aim of provoking distress. Revenge porn was first made a criminal offence in the UK in 2015, with perpetrators facing prison sentences of up to two years.

However, the law recently changed in 2021 to also punish those who threaten to share explicit private images or videos in the wake of the Naked Threat campaign launched by leading domestic abuse charity Refuge. Despite this progress, the number of people charged for revenge porn is dishearteningly low, with data showing that only 4 per cent of reports lead to court action, despite cases skyrocketing. Data obtained through Freedom of Information laws by Refuge show that 13,860 explicit-image crimes were recorded across 24 police forces from 1 January 2019 to 31 July 2022. However, a negligible 534 cases resulted in charges. Experts in the field object to the term revenge porn, instead preferring the decidedly clunkier, less memorable phrase "intimate image-based abuse."

This is because the word "revenge" implies the victim has done something to deserve having naked photos of them leaked to the world. In reality, revenge is just one of the manifold reasons perpetrators decide to leak explicit pictures or footage. Not that it is ever a fair or advisable form of reprisal. Take the BBC Panorama investigation which unearthed online groups with thousands of members known as ‘subreddits’ where men trade, sell and purchase personal photos of women. This phenomenon transcends Reddit and has been labelled "collector culture." "So-called 'collector culture' is a growing problem," Zara Ward, who works in a senior role on the revenge porn helpline, told me. "We see that these behaviours have evolved over time where the collectors will aim to avoid detection so content cannot be removed, and victims are left in the dark as to if their content has been shared illegally."

What is upskirting?

It is worth bearing in mind there has been a considerable amount of legislation addressing cybersex crimes in recent years. Upskirting, defined as the act of covertly filming or taking a picture under a person’s skirt without gaining their consent, was made a criminal offence in England and Wales in April 2019, while cyberflashing is also due to become a criminal offence in England and Wales. Further to this, the government has announced distributing deepfakes, explicit material manipulated to look like someone without their consent, will soon become illegal.

What is sextortion?

Sextortion is another growing issue in the UK and around the world. This involves explicit images or footage being used to blackmail an individual. The perpetrators are overwhelmingly organised crime contingents operating from abroad, but they can also be a partner or an ex. For those who no doubt find intimate image abuse and sextortion disturbing, then voyeurism will really unnerve you.

What is voyeurism?

For the blissfully unaware, voyeurism involves peeping toms installing clandestine cameras in rental and student properties or public spaces including toilets, swimming pool cubicles, changing rooms and tanning salons to capture explicit photos of women without their consent. This material is then uploaded to porn websites where, experts have informed me, there is a growing market for such material.

This is a growing problem in South Korea where the trend termed "spy-cam porn" is circulating online and is so widespread that it is sometimes referred to as an "epidemic." This is a crime predominantly perpetrated by men, and police in South Korea received more than 30,000 reports of covert cameras being used for filming between 2013 and 2018. The country’s lightning-fast internet permits images to be rapidly downloaded, distributed and sold. Human Rights Watch, a prominent global organisation, said the trend is having "devastating" repercussions on victims, as the images can "spread uncontrollably."

What is online grooming?

Online grooming is another grim cybersex crime that deserves attention. The Internet Watch Foundation states that girls are the victims in 92 per cent of all child abuse sexual content they remove from the internet. The organisation considers online grooming to be a "national crisis," warning that adult men have approached children as young as 11 online, with perpetrators duping young girls into taking off their clothes on live-streaming sites before the footage is distributed on child sex abuse sites. Adult offenders will pretend to be fellow teenagers or fake boyfriends, and experts warn that grooming can be done far more swiftly on the internet than in person. In essence, while sexual predators may be as old as the hills, the World Wide Web has offered perpetrators new and increasingly sophisticated ways to execute their sick and twisted exploits.

Sadly, around the world, the criminal justice system has often been sluggish in staying on top of these issues, especially as the internet evolves and develops.

Cybersex crimes statistics

• Calls to the national Revenge Porn Helpline about threats to share intimate images more than tripled between 2017 and 2020.

• A report by the Revenge Porn Helpline branded "collector culture" – gathering, uploading and trading intimate material of women – as "an emerging trend" that is "increasing at pace."

• A rugby group at Oxford Brookes University urged players to get as many nudes of women at the university as they could to disseminate and rate.

• A private Bristol Facebook group where men distribute explicit photos and videos of women, including content of their ex-partners, accumulates 7,000 members in days.

• A U.S. study states that women and children make up the majority of the victims of sextortion, with researchers saying that in many sextortion cases the perpetrators did not even have the photos or footage they were using to control and exploit their victims.

• Sextortion cases reported to the UK’s Revenge Porn Helpline almost doubled within a year, becoming the biggest issue it grapples with for the first time in 2021.

• Data shows that more than a third of revenge porn cases are dropped by victims despite a suspect being identified. Charities warn that a "potentially bruising" criminal justice ordeal without assurance of anonymity and a dearth of trust in the police are partially behind this.

• In 2014, naked images of high-profile actors, musicians, models and presenters were leaked on the website 4chan, an image-sharing forum, in a hack linked to the Apple iCloud service. The list was predominantly made up of female stars, including Jennifer Lawrence, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, Kate Upton, Selena Gomez, Cara Delevingne and many more.

Resources for survivors of cybersex crimes

• Women’s Aid and Refuge – two leading domestic abuse charities who advise on partner-related cyber-sex crimes.

• Suzy Lamplugh Trust – personal-safety charity which runs the free National Stalking Helpline (0808 802 0300).

• Revenge Porn Helpline – free service that supports adults coping with intimate-image abuse.

• Internet Watch Foundation – removes child abuse imagery from the internet.

• Cyber Civil Rights Initiative – leading U.S. organisation serving thousands of victims around the world.

If you have experienced sexual abuse, call the free, confidential National Sexual Assault hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673), or access the 24-7 help online by visiting online.rainn.org.

The Pocket Guide to the Patriarchy by Maya Oppenheim is out now.

It's Women's History Month in the U.S., and what better way to celebrate than with the cold, hard truth? According to Bumble's annual State of the Nation report — findings from a survey of around 2,500 American adults commissioned by the app — there's a "reality gap" between what survey respondents believe versus what is experienced in real life. Nearly half, 46 percent, of Gen Z surveyed believe that gender equality is improving, but the rest of the data tells a different story.

The report, which centers around the current state of equality in dating and relationships, career, finances, and more, found that 87 percent of respondents agreed that "relationships that share power equality lead to better sex." Forty percent overall and 47 percent of Gen Z, however, said that "relationships work best when the man takes the lead."

While 54 percent said it doesn't matter who strikes up a conversation with someone they're interested in, only 11 percent said that women should make the first move on a dating app.

It seems that those surveyed are idealistic about gender equality, but see that there's a long way to go. Ninety-one percent of respondents agree on the definition of gender equality: "Men and women are equal, and should be given equal opportunities in all things." The same amount of those surveyed, 91 percent, believe improving women's rights would make the world a better place for everyone. Still, 79 percent of respondents — including 84 percent of women surveyed — said that women have to compromise between career, relationships, and family that men don't.

People surveyed also acknowledged financial inequality, and how that impacts women: 80 percent said that the lack of financial independence is a major reason women stay in unhappy relationships. Sixty-five percent stated that social systems make women financially dependent on men.

Want more sex and dating stories in your inbox? Sign up for Mashable's new weekly After Dark newsletter.

In terms of career equality, 81 percent of women respondents said that inequality in childcare roles leads to inequality in career achievements; only 71 percent of men surveyed agreed. More men than women, though — 58 and 54 percent, respectively — said that taking maternity leave disadvantages women's career prospects. Overall, 76 percent of respondents (83 percent of women and 69 percent of men) said mothers feel more guilty spending time furthering their careers than fathers do.

This Women's History Month, it's clear that there's much to be done in terms of gender equality. Let's hope that next year, the reality gap narrows.

In 1866, Gustave Courbet painted a provocative icon of modern art: The Origin of the World. Hung in Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the painting shows a woman's thighs, torso, part of one breast and her hairy genitals. It's one of the most beautiful and powerful paintings of all time.

Jenna Gribbon, a queer figurative painter in Brooklyn, frequently paints her partner, Mackenzie Scott, in a similar vein. In one painting, Scott is laying naked, her breasts and thighs and pubic hair and fluorescent pink nipples painted across a massive canvas. 

"I can't think of any other canonized painting that continues to be so shocking," Gribbon said in an interview with Vogue of her admiration for The Origin of the World. "I would love that painting more if it was painted by a woman, but the premise that we all come from a woman's body is a very human one. It's the opposite of objectifying a woman's anatomy — it considers the physical and spiritual reality of a woman's body."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Gribbon and Courbet's paintings have much in common, but there's a distinct difference between the two: the gender of their creators. In my mind, both artists have painted women in what some might argue as the female gaze — a term in feminist theory that refers to the representation of women in art as subjects with agency. But plenty of art historians argue that Courbet's painting had to have been created from the male gaze because the woman in the painting doesn't appear to have much obvious autonomy; she doesn't even have a face.

It's a much debated topic, and this term, which was originally used in film, has made its way onto the depths of the art world. Now, it's being misconceived on TikTok.

What is the female gaze?

The female gaze wasn't coined until after feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey first began dissecting the male gaze in her 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," in which she writes that the male gaze projects a male fantasy onto the female figure on film. Under the male gaze, women are to be looked at and displayed, with their "appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness." 

Through the male gaze, a woman isn’t actually a person at all; she’s a plot device used to advance the man’s story. "She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero…who makes him act the way he does," director Oscar "Budd" Boetticher Jr. said in the 1950s, according to Mulvey. "The woman has not the slightest importance."

Lisa French, the dean of the school of media and communication at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and author of The Female Gaze in Documentary Film: An International Perspective, describes the female gaze by using the example of Jane Campion's 1990 film An Angel at My Table. In one scene, a few girls go into a forest after having a swim, and they sit and talk and are "performing femininity" — the whole interaction, French says, speaks to how women look at other women. "They're kind of expressing women's culture." 

We've come a long way in the past 48 years. The art we take in now has evolved so far beyond the language we use to analyze it that the two are at a tipping point; one must be willing to bend for the other to continue to grow. On TikTok, users talk about the male and female gaze, but they're warping this terminology into something that’s just not quite right because the platform their art exists on demands it.

Under the TikTok gaze

If you spend time online, like Rayne Fisher-Quann, a feminist culture critic who writes the newsletter Internet Princess, you might think that the female gaze is "good" and the male gaze is "bad."

TikTok is not a platform for nuance. 

Online, the male gaze has been used "almost exclusively to refer to things that men look at or like things that men would want to look at," Fisher-Quann told Mashable. "That's just a blatant misappropriation where people hear something like the word 'male gaze' and think that they can assume that they know what it means." 

There is some truth to the idea that "the male gaze is what men think that women want and the female gaze is what women think women want," Fisher-Quann explains, but the internet is diluting the "actual theoretical meaning of what they were meant to do."

For instance, on TikTok some users complain that Ryan Reynolds is hot through the male gaze, but Michael Cera is hot through the female gaze. The female gaze is when men wear skirts and women have armpit hair; the male gaze is when women have big boobs and men have toned muscles. At one point, months ago, users said some guy named Kevin had "mastered" the female gaze by posting a series of thirst trap videos in which he lip-synced to music acting nervous and awkward before becoming confident; his videos went viral, and comments under the videos said he really "understands the female gaze." Kevin, of course, does not actually represent the female gaze as the term was originally intended. His existence cannot be through the lens of the female gaze or the male gaze or any other kind of gaze; Kevin is a real person and, as Dazed points out, he kind of sucks.

In film, the female gaze looks at three viewpoints: the director, the characters within the film, and the spectator. On TikTok, you can be all three even when the cameras are off. With day-in-the-life videos and main character energy and "do it for the plot" rhetoric, we're eroding the lines that separated ourselves as people from ourselves as commodities. 

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

"People are increasingly using the language of film studies to understand themselves," Fisher-Quann said. "Social media has exacerbated this thing that has always existed, particularly for women, of having an external watcher or a feeling like you have to optimize your life to the ever-present consumer that exists in your head. The popularization of these film studies terms… does have something to do with the way that we are packaging everything for consumption."

This isn't new: Language changes online all the time. Academic and professional jargon makes its way onto social media and then gets misappropriated entirely. The unfortunate reality of destroying the very meaning of a phrase is that it becomes gaudy and overused and, loathsome of all, cringey. But with this re-appropriation, we're taking a societal issue — how women are being seen and spoken about and marketed to — and turning it into an aesthetic one. 

The aesthetic of the self

Not everyone even believes that Courbet's painting was feminist at all.

"The painting was highly controversial from its inception, and for close to a century and a half the little vulvic portrait passed from one male collector to another, hidden behind curtains, faux panels, and hinged landscapes," Lilianne Milgrom, the first person authorized by the Orsay Museum to copy the painting, wrote in an essay for Daily Art Magazine. "Modern art criticism has often vilified L’Origine du monde as a symbol of the exploitative male gaze so prevalent in art history. What happens to the painting — and for that matter, the viewer herself — when subjected to an unwavering female gaze?"

We can debate if the painting is depicting a woman through a male gaze or a female gaze or neither specifically because it is art — art is designed to be discussed, to be unpacked and packed back up and mulled over for centuries. 

The trouble with discussing our very selves as if they are art is that it opens us up to being discussed and torn apart as if our humanity is not at stake. We've been conditioned to believe that our online aesthetic is inherent to who we are as people. But we're not art on a canvas or fictional characters on film. The gaze through which we see is our own.

Sitting at the bar after a comedy open mic, a couple of male comics asked me about sex parties. A joke I’d tried on stage about one experience had sparked their curiosities. After the usual questions about participation requirements, gender ratios, and voyeurism etiquette, one guy asked me how consent works at a play party. This led to a broader conversation about consent, and then gender, and then male entitlement.

I was pleasantly surprised by the scene: three straight-seeming cisgender dude-comedians at a bar trading notes about how to make consent sexy on a first date. We compared and contrasted ideas about when to ask for that first kiss and when you can just trust the vibe to lean in, citing the infamous 90-10 rule from Will Smith’s 2005 comedy Hitch.

I should mention that in this piece, I’ll be using ‘man’ as a shorthand for cisgender guys who date women. We’re not the only ones who can be shitty, but the overwhelming amount of shared experiences of women who date dudes makes the problem being discussed and its possible causes seem particularly cis, het/bi, and male.

When you think about a group of dudes talking to each other about sex, you might imagine tales of conquest while everyone pretends to know how to handle a clitoris. I remember quietly sitting in an NYU dorm room sophomore year hearing a bunch of frat guys add up their ‘sex scores’ based on a variety of rules like how many times you can repeat points with one chick and how many points you get for anal. Never did they mention points for bringing her to orgasm. It all felt icky. Is this how men talk to each other about sex? 

What is locker room talk?

The measurement for sexual prowess tends to be measured in pussies smashed, not pleasure caused; women conquered, not women left whole when you leave. Men ask for your body count but not your strategy for figuring out her body. It’s what we all heard happen on that Access Hollywood tape between Billy Bush and Donald Trump. Tens of millions of Americans in 2016 accepted that that’s just how men talk to each other. "It’s just locker room talk," they said (despite countless pro athletes publicly pushing back against the characterization). So what was that all about?

In Cleo Stiller’s book, Modern Manhood, she writes about how traditional male friendships are structured by "creating in-groups at the expense of out-groups." The other team, the other guy, the other company, the other gender.

"Friendships between males has often been centered around an external force," says Dan Doty, who runs the men’s support group EVRYMAN, in Stiller’s book. “Men build identities based on this external thing, and when that external thing no longer is strong or it shifts or it’s not the same anymore, then we are left kind of hanging.” In lieu of connecting with each other based on who they are, many men jump to the (assumed) shared topic of chicks. It’s the source of any one man in a bar turning to another man and saying, “Women, am I right?”

Make female orgasms part of locker room talk

Comedian Clint Coley doesn’t need his buddies to know about his sex life. The urge to ‘feel cool’ with ‘locker room talk’ is long past him. And since entering his 30s, he doesn’t need to hear his buddies brag to him either. "I got a homeboy who does like to tell me what he has going on. I always tell him, 'Nobody cares.'"

Coley launched his dating podcast Advice from a F*ck Boy in 2019 to help women avoid emotionally immature men. "Sex is taught [to boys] as a selfish sport," he shares. At the same time, many women stress out about satisfying their man in the bedroom. They exchange tips, techniques, and ideas on how to give the best blowjob. Cosmopolitan has been pumping out (both good and laughably bad) sex advice to women for decades. (Editor's note: Mashable has an informative and reliable sex advice series called Come Again, which is well worth your time.) Adult sex ed platforms like Beducated attract mostly women and only the most curious men, per audience figures seen by Mashable.

Meanwhile, "when men are talking to their homeboys about sex, we’re not talking about new ways to please women," says the LA-based podcaster. "We’re talking about new ways to get our shit off. It’s not about [their] pleasure; it’s about your own ego." And why not? When ejaculation brags go unchallenged, there isn’t much reason to think you’re doing it wrong.

Do men experience empathy during sex?

There is an empathy gap afoot. And research can’t find a genetic reason for it. "Neurologically we are all born with a very similar ability to empathize, male and female, but our choice to use this ability varies greatly," writes Mimi Nicklin, a thought leader on empathy and author of Softening the Edge. "Observed gender differences are more likely to be…due to cultural expectations of gender roles and the fact that women are more likely to have been ‘taught’ empathy by female role models as they grew up."

How do we teach men to give a shit? For one thing, teaching consent can instill empathy in boys if you get there quick enough. According to a post on Prevent Child Abuse Vermont’s website, "Empathy learning occurs in the same parts of the brain as learning to speak and read." The post goes on to say, "Empathy is being able to stand in another person’s shoes and care about their feelings."

It should feel jarring to have sex with someone if you don’t think they’re having a good time. Alarm bells should go off to try a different technique or to verbally check in. Sadly, efforts to introduce these lessons in schools (e.g. teaching kids to ask permission before hugging the new kid) is often met with pushback from abstinence-only advocates who lob false accusations of "grooming."

To fill the void left by most school districts, young people turn to the internet. But on the same platforms as ConsentTok are influencers teaching boys that they are 'high-value men' entitled to great sex from hot women. For every young man who stumbles upon a sex educator’s TikTok, there’s another who instead finds an Andrew Tate-type preaching misogyny masked as men’s self-improvement. These guys will teach you how to get a woman into bed but they won’t teach you what to do once you get there.

And so often, the tactics to bed a woman turn her into a target instead of a connection. In the course of getting what they want, men can forget that there’s a human being on the other end of their desires.

Talk to your buddies about sex—better

I asked Coley where he learned how to empathize with women. "A woman." Damn. Because I hear women are tired of having to teach us. A friend of mine told me about a recent date-turned-argument with a man where she had to explain male privilege. After an hour, he admitted that he hadn’t thought about it like that before and asked if they could go back to enjoying their wine night. My friend was glad he learned something new. But now she was exhausted.

So maybe dudes can pick up the slack and question each other. Not every problematic utterance has to become a TED Talk, but one could use friendly shame to make their point. Clown on the guy who wants to compare everyone’s body counts at the next hang. "You gotta make it corny" to talk about women as objects, suggests Coley.

"We need a better check and balance system when it comes to talking about women behind their backs."

A few years ago, I came to briefly know Amber Heard. The woman I met on the phone, then later in person, struck me as authentic and sincere as she spoke about her role as a Human Rights Champion of the United Nations Human Rights Office. I never imagined she'd one day become the singular focus of influencers and creators eager to mock and monetize her tears. But for the past few weeks, people have done exactly that, obsessively turning her testimony in a defamation lawsuit brought by her ex-husband Johnny Depp into a dystopian social media circus, with support from a surprising number of celebrities. 

The livestreamed trial is supposed to determine whether Heard defamed Depp when she wrote in an op-ed that she'd become a "public figure representing domestic abuse." Depp denies that he physically and sexually abused her while they were married. Instead, he accused Heard of abusing him and argued that the op-ed cost him a Pirates of the Caribbean film, though Heard's lawyer questioned the timing of his dismissal. Heard also launched her own counter-defamation suit against Depp. In 2020, Depp lost a libel case against a British newspaper that called him a "wife beater." The judge in that case wrote, "I accept that Mr. Depp put her in fear of her life."

Though I couldn't imagine it then, the clues that Heard would become an enduring target were there, back in 2018. While scouring her social media accounts prior to our phone interview, I quickly noticed the insults routinely lobbed at her by an army of Depp supporters. After that article was published, Twitter users who appeared to back Depp began tagging me in mentions that maligned Heard. A month later, when I interviewed her onstage at the Social Good Summit, an event co-sponsored by the United Nations Foundation, the United Nations Development Programme, the 92nd Street Y, and Mashable, similar accounts again attacked her. 

When I later commented on Twitter that I appreciated Heard's passion for human rights, someone who currently tweets regularly about Depp and the trial replied, "That's because she needs to do overtime to try to make people forget about the kind of person she really is." 

This narrative has driven much of the social commentary, including memes and videos, about the trial: Heard is a manipulative liar set on destroying a good man's name. We know this trope well because it has traditionally kept domestic violence victims silent. But now it's being weaponized by powerful celebrities and for profit by the creator economy, which should frighten anyone who cares about justice for survivors of intimate partner violence. 

The conviction that Heard is lying is underpinned by the notion that Depp is beloved by his fans and friends alike, who know him to be a decent human being. Based on that familiarity and personal experience, they insist he's incapable of abuse. I've written before about how dangerous and misguided these character witnesses can be. Acknowledging that someone you admire or consider a close friend may have also assaulted his partner, when you've never seen that side of him, is painful. It's much easier to act as a character witness vouching for the good character of the accused. 

"Even the most horrendous violent person is not violent toward everyone all the time," Jackie White, emerita professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, told me in 2016, when I asked her about why character witnesses insist on defending the accused based not on an objective reading of the evidence but the nature of their personal interactions. "It’s highly likely that there are going to be people in their lives for whom the relationship has been positive."

Such insistence may seem even more justified in cases without a so-called perfect victim. Heard admitted on the stand to striking Depp. An audio recording also captured her taunting and berating Depp, telling him that the world wouldn't believe a man who accused a woman of domestic violence. On the stand, Heard was remorseful about insulting him during their fights, acknowledging that she and Depp lashed out at each other often. 

We should take seriously any evidence that Heard abused Depp, because men can be victims of domestic violence, yet the trial's revelations don't prove Heard is being deceitful about allegations that Depp assaulted her. They reveal what is hard for most people to contemplate: A woman who says she's been terrorized by her partner can also, at times, inflict physical or emotional harm on him. But there's no room online to think deeply or speak with nuance about the complexity of violent relationships.

Instead, audiences see a man who's entertained them for years and a beautiful woman, decades his junior, who's punctured their fantasy of who he is when the cameras stop rolling. They may blame Heard for this disillusionment, but it was Depp's text messages, entered into evidence as part of the trial, that uncovered his musing about Heard ending up as a "rotting corpse" in the trunk of a Honda Civic. Some of Depp's personal messages to Heard also depict a man who deeply regrets his behavior during their fights, even if he is vague about what transpired. 

Depp's celebrity supporters somehow overlook these details and have helped fuel the discourse that Heard is lying. Podcaster Joe Rogan, whose own tangles with the truth are well-documented, called Heard a "crazy lady." In a recent standup routine, comedian Chris Rock reportedly joked, "Believe all women, believe all women…except Amber Heard." In a recent concert, Paul McCartney projected a video of Depp playing his song My Valentine, from a performance he directed a decade ago. 

If McCartney's gesture seems benign, consider that one notable person in the audience — Jill Vedder, wife of Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder and a Global Citizen ambassador — decided to turn the moment into a social media post backing Depp. "And while I support women and the ME TOO movement / I also know some women who have destroyed the lives of innocent & good men," she wrote. Model Ireland Baldwin shared a similar sentiment in an Instagram story, commenting that she knows "women who are exactly like this" who "use their very womanhood to play victim and turn the world against the man."

Never mind that these misogynistic talking points sound a lot like men's rights activism; the public doesn't know these cases, can't judge their merits, and personal knowledge of them simply doesn't amount to proof that Heard is lying. 

At a Pearl Jam concert in Oakland last week, Eddie Vedder personally rattled off an anecdote about having partied with Depp and the Rolling Stones years ago, pausing to note that Depp had been a "complete gentleman." The arena, which has a capacity of more than 19,000, cheered with approval, a frightening spectacle given that it was effectively collective approval for labeling an alleged victim of domestic violence a liar. 

What's strange is that Vedder is one of few rock stars who's unapologetically outspoken about gender equality and women's rights. He even famously wrote an empathetic song about a woman in an unhealthy, perhaps abusive relationship. But maybe when it's your friend who's accused and the cause feels righteous, loyalty matters more. Standing stunned in the audience, with an N95 plastered to my face, I wondered: How many people here now feel that if a man they respect, known for his gender equality advocacy, can dismiss claims of domestic violence based on enjoyable experiences with the accused, they can, too? 

Celebrities may not understand or care about the depth of vitriol aimed at Heard every day, but they should know better than to give cover to fans eager to tear down a woman for sport or vengeance. Depp's famous friends offer no firsthand evidence of Heard's alleged deceit — just their testimony as character witnesses. It is a disturbing lesson to the public: If enough people say a man is good and decent, then the victim must be lying. The truth is often more complicated, and sometimes darker, than that.

Tragically, character witnesses can give anti-fans, who build an online identity and community around despising a famous person, exactly what they crave: a spark to further fuel their hatred. As the Atlantic recently noted, anti-fandoms feature "elements of a new paranoid style," and conspiracy theories can dominate as a result. Women in the public eye are commonly targets of anti-fandoms, and Heard is no exception. (One debunked theory about Heard's testimony is that she stole lines from The Talented Mr. Ripley to use as her own.) 

It's no leap to suggest non-famous domestic violence victims will be consequently subject to similar obsessive scrutiny in their own communities. What's to keep the average TikTok user defending an accused abuser from creating clips that insist the victim is lying? Depp vs. Heard has made that both profitable and permissible. 

Based on my personal experience, I cannot judge how Heard behaved with Depp. Clearly she and Depp had a volatile relationship. In a professional setting, I found her to be curious, genuine, and deeply caring, including when I wasn't taking notes. But I also understand that people are complex. I'd rather let the legal system prevail, with real evidence that's far more compelling than my impressions of her character. 

What I can say is that the public shouldn't cheer the digital abuse Heard has endured, nor the public mockery she's experiencing now. And if her haters and detractors, including Depp's celebrity friends, won't stop for her sake, perhaps they'll consider what their behavior will mean for domestic violence survivors whose names we'll never know. 

If you've experienced domestic or intimate partner violence, you can call the National Domestic Violence hotline at 1−800−799−7233. Additional resources are available on its website.

This post contains spoilers for The Northman

There's a background character in The Northman you probably blinked and missed. But her appearance, however brief, electrified me more than any other thrill in director Robert Eggers' bombastic new Viking epic (and that's saying something).

Amleth (who embodies the traditional hypermasculine Viking warrior ideal that dominates today's modern reimaginings of this ancient history) is partaking in the spoils of a violent raid on an innocent village. Then an armor-clad woman on horseback storms into the shot. Bearing all the visual markers of a military leader, she rallies the conquered villagers, waving a flag and calling upon strong warriors of any background to join her fight — before riding off, never to be seen in the movie again.

But I spent the rest of its runtime longing for the movie that could've been, if only she had been its main character instead.

Don't get me wrong: I love what The Northman does with Alexander Skarsgård as its lead. But let's be honest, by far the most underwhelming part of Egger's enthrallingly refreshing film is its tired old Revenge-For-My-Daddy-King storyline that's been shoved down our throats countless times before, by everything from Hamlet to The Lion King. 

Yet I digress. Because as a dork for this era of prehistory, I'm especially a fan of Eggers' entry into the recent pop culture trend putting Vikings in major TV shows, films, and video games. From History Channel's surprisingly great Vikings series to Netflix's more recent Norsemen and Vikings: Valhalla shows, Marvel's box office-breaking Thor movies (particularly Ragnarok), and the excellent 2018 reboot of God of War, I'm living for this ancient Nordic moment in the mainstream.

But I'm also sick of each one making the same exact mistake by sidelining the best part of real-world Viking history: the absolute badassery of their warrior women (AKA shieldmaidens).

The fact, fiction, myth, and misogyny behind shieldmaidens  

Now, to his credit, Eggers is a stickler for historical accuracy in his movies. 

That's why the nameless female military leader in The Northman is a deliberate acknowledgment of recent archaeological evidence suggesting that Viking warrior women really did exist, which experts previously doubted. According to interviews, the movie character is loosely based on the famous grave of a high-ranking Viking military leader (identified as Bj 581) long-assumed to be male — until DNA evidence published in 2017 definitively proved she was female. 

In The Northman, Amleth's prophesied demise (delivered by none other than Björk) along with his "King's tree" vision implies that his downfall is only the first chapter in his daughter's larger story, as she fulfills her destiny of becoming a great Viking Queen. We'll count that as yet another nod to actual archeological evidence that leadership roles in the Viking Age were far more gender-fluid than previously thought.

But for the love of all that is Freya, why is all this Viking warrior woman badassery still kept so squarely in the background of The Northman?

Just about every other pop culture story set in the Viking Age is guilty of the same oversight. God of War and Thor certainly include the strong mythological female characters central to Norse lore, like the Valkyries and goddess Freya. The Vikings TV show brings that representation a step closer to home by depicting real-world Viking women battling alongside men. But only 2020's Assassin's Creed: Valhalla video game gives players the option to play as a Viking female protagonist. Even then, though, getting the option to play as a woman is not the same as getting a story specifically grounded in the perspective of a Viking shieldmaiden.

In all fairness, though, we can't blame the sidelining of warlike Viking women exclusively on The Northman and its ilk. Until quite recently, women's importance in Viking society was sidelined by history itself too.

History, particularly prehistory pieced together through thousand-year-old archeological finds, isn't as hard of a science as we want it to be. Built on a foundation of facts that rely heavily on the subjective interpretation of artifacts, it's colored by the biases of our modern, male-dominated society. The impact those biases can have on our understanding of gender dynamics in the Viking Age became very clear in the reaction to the 2017 DNA analysis study of the so-called Birka female Viking warrior's grave. 

I love a witchy Anya Taylor-Joy, but this representation is missing a war hammer. Credit: Focus Features

After the skeleton was confirmed to be female, some archeologists jumped to the conclusion that the grave must've never belonged to a military leader in the first place, then, despite containing ample qualifying artifacts. But debate over the Birka female Viking warrior grave only deepened an existing divide within the archeological community over Viking women's role in the social hierarchy.

Many experts still negate the mounting evidence of women being present for the hostile Viking invasions, and discoveries of even more female warrior graves, along with the historical accounts of Viking women joining in warfare — insisting that the statues and depictions of battle-ready Viking women are only symbolic rather than indicative of real-world shieldmaidens. Each side of this debate accuses the other of modern biases, implying that either sexism or feminism clouds the other's objectivity. 

The women written out of the Viking pop culture trend

We don't yet have conclusive answers on how pervasive shieldmaidens were in the Viking Age. But their absence from The Northman, aside from the few seconds afforded to the one proven incontrovertibly real, tells us a lot about which narratives we're inclined to believe today, even in a film full of magic. 

I'm all for Robert Eggers' near obsessive fixation on grounding his films in real-world facts as much as possible. But exactly which version of history is he giving more weight to — and whose perspective do those versions leave out? 

Much like movies, history is a story we tell ourselves to make sense of the world. And frankly, I'm just tired of the Viking Age being used exclusively as a setting to justify depictions of unfettered hypermasculinity, to exercise the same old male-centric anxieties about patriarchy, through the same cookie-cutter male hero archetype, in the same story told over and over and over again. 

This isn't really a feminist call-out. It's a declaration of utter boredom — a plea for pop culture's Vikings to try on literally anything other than muddy blood-soaked men, if only for the change of pace. Out of anyone, I thought that maybe the director of The Witch would've known how invigorating it can be to immerse modern audiences in the perspective of women who were too often written out of their own histories.

But perhaps Eggers chose to sideline shieldmaidens in The Northman as a franchise play, to hype up The Northwoman, if you will (god, please don't let this become an actual reality). Most likely, though, it's just the same lack of imagination that turned real Viking women into a myth.

In Colombia, abortion has been decriminalized, as ruled by the country's top court on Monday. People can now seek the procedure during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy without fear of prosecution, a result of a growing grassroots feminist movement that has swept across Colombia, long a mostly conservative, Catholic country.

The historic win saw a sea of celebrators bursting onto the streets of the capital, Bogotá, and other major cities in the country. Activists clad in green and wearing handkerchiefs (a symbol derived from Argentina's abortion rights movement) cheered, danced, and tearfully hugged one another outside the Constitutional Court.

Colombia joins a string of Latin American countries that have made similar legal rulings. Mexico's Supreme Court decriminalized abortion last year, while Argentina legalized it in another landmark vote in 2020 after a long, tough campaign.

Decriminalization essentially states that any criminal penalties attached to an act are no longer in place. On the other hand, legalization is the process of making an act entirely legal.

“We celebrate this ruling as a historic victory for the women’s movement in Colombia that has fought for decades for the recognition of their rights," said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International's Americas director, in a press statement.

"Women, girls, and people able to bear children are the only ones who should make decisions about their bodies. Now, instead of punishing them, the Colombian authorities will have to recognize their autonomy over their bodies and their life plans."

The green handkerchief first became a symbol of Argentina's abortion rights movement. Credit: Photo by Guillermo Legaria Schweizer/Getty Images.

A green wave of celebration in Bogotá. Credit: Raul Arboleda / AFP via Getty Images.

Two petitions were under consideration in the Constitutional Court of Colombia, one from lawyer Andrés Mateo Sánchez Molina, who argued that the criminalisation of abortion was unconstitutional. The second came from Causa Justa, a coalition of feminist and abortion rights groups, whose lawyers stated that the stigma and overall perception of abortion in the country prevented even legal procedures from taking place.

Women's Link Worldwide (WLW), an international rights group, was one of over 100 organizations and activists comprising the Causa Justa movement. They collectively filed a lawsuit in the Constitutional Court in 2020.

Mariana Ardila, managing attorney at WLW, tells Mashable that this week's ruling is a "significant step forward in allowing Colombian women and girls greater access to dignified abortion care, without fear of punishment and without having to resort to dangerous abortions."

Previously, abortion was permitted in Colombia if there were serious risks to life or health concerns for pregnant women, or if the pregnancy was a result of incest, rape, or non-consensual artificial insemination. Oftentimes, the criminal penalties in place meant women were forced to avoid legal health centers, opting for underground clinics with far more risk. According to the country's health ministry, about 70 people die each year due to an illegal abortion.

Ardila says that unsafe abortions are the result of the mere presence of abortion in the criminal code, due to the caveats attached to whether or not an abortion would be permitted.

"[This] is especially true for women and girls with limited education, poor women, victims of violence, minority women, and women living in rural areas who often end up seeking abortions later in pregnancy because they lack information, resources, and access to healthcare facilities," Ardila says. "They must not be left out or forgotten."

"Starting now, any woman or girl who needs an abortion and makes a free and informed decision to seek one can go to a healthcare facility to have the procedure done safely, without delays or barriers, and without having to show that she falls under one of the exceptions established 15 years ago, up to week 24," says Ardila.

Colombia's abortion rights movement led by Causa Justa is comprised of over 100 organizations. Credit: Photo by Guillermo Legaria Schweizer/Getty Images.

Research by Causa Justa found that at least 350 women have been convicted or sanctioned for abortions between 2006 and mid-2019. Twenty of these people were girls under the age of 18.

The case from Causa Justa was heard by the court first, but Molina's will be heard at a later date. However, this decision cannot be reversed, according to the NY Times.

"The case has strengthened Colombia’s women's movement and is serving as a reference for allies throughout Latin America litigating on abortion," Ardila says.

The UK government has said that at-home early medical abortions can continue to take place in the country, a decision that abortion campaigners have been pushing for particularly during the pandemic.

At-home early medical abortions, or telemedicine abortions, were granted temporary approval in March 2020. This method means medication can be taken at home to induce a medical termination of pregnancy up to 10 weeks (nine weeks and six days) gestation.

The government, in conjunction with the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), agreed that early medical abortions at home (rather than surgical), following a phone/online consultation with a clinician and without needing to first visit a clinic or hospital, was allowed "to reduce the risk of transmission of COVID-19 and ensure continued access to abortion services."

This was especially vital in 2020, when the National Health Service (NHS) was under considerable strain at the outbreak of the pandemic. Abortion services felt this strain, too: clinics run by BPAS were shut down, resulting in pregnant women and people often having to travel long distances to access adequate care. Ann Furedi, chief executive of BPAS, previously told Mashable that people were "not getting the care they need."

In order for safe treatments to take place as the pandemic wore on, pregnant people were granted access to abortions wholly within the own homes. As the pandemic progressed, it was unclear whether this approval would continue. The government had said the measure was "time limited for two years, or until the pandemic is over — whichever is earliest."

Telemedicine is considered by doctors, including the RCOG, to be safe, effective, and a viable pathway to abortion access. Prior to the pandemic, the treatment of early medication abortion would entail the first of two pills having to be consumed at a clinic.

While the Department of Health and Social Care has not fully detailed the plans for this decision, the early announcement has been celebrated by abortion campaigners. Mashable has reached out to the department for further details.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

However, abortion rights in the UK still have a long ways to go. Abortion is still considered a criminal offence in both England and Wales, due to the 1967 Abortion Act. While the act legalised abortion, it failed to remove the Offences against the Person Act of 1861, which technically makes "procuring a miscarriage" a crime. Therefore, the Abortion Act isn't considered a true one.

Experts and campaigners have been fighting for the full decriminalisation of abortion for years — it's a long road.

Facebook isn't supposed to let advertisers target by things like age or gender for employment ads anymore, but a new study showed that the social network's ad algorithm is doing it anyway.

More than two years after Facebook disabled that particular feature for housing and employment listings, researchers at the University of Southern California found that certain job listings mysteriously still show a noticeable skew in who sees them. The study's findings would be illegal under federal employment discrimination law.

"Our system takes into account many signals to try and serve people ads they will be most interested in, but we understand the concerns raised in the report," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement responding to the study, shared with Mashable. "We’ve taken meaningful steps to address issues of discrimination in ads and have teams working on ads fairness today. We're continuing to work closely with the civil rights community, regulators, and academics on these important matters."

To understand the study, one must first understand an interesting carve-out in Title VII, the U.S. law that prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, gender, and so on. Employers are still technically allowed to hire based on "bona fide occupational qualifications." That means a company that makes men's clothing is legally allowed to only consider men for modeling positions, when that would be discrimination in most other fields.

While previous studies that reached the same conclusion about Facebook's ad algorithms used different methodology, the USC study focused on this by creating job listings for jobs that exhibit real-life gender demographic skews despite no real difference in qualifications. For example, Domino's Pizza delivery drivers are overwhelmingly male while Instacart grocery deliverers are predominantly female, per the study.

When the researchers created job listings for Domino's drivers and Instacart shoppers and ran them at the same time to the same audiences, the former were largely delivered to men and the latter to women by Facebook's backend advertising technology.

This held true even with listings for software engineer and retail sales associate jobs that also carry the same real-life gender skew. Even when choosing to optimize the ad campaign for the most possible views (as opposed to the most likely click-throughs, another option Facebook offers advertisers), the gender gap still persisted. Interestingly, none of this happened when the same methodology was applied to LinkedIn's listing service.

We've known for years that Facebook's job ads technology allows for direct or indirect discrimination like this, but the fact that it still happens like this without human intervention years after Facebook promised to do better is concerning. Finding good work is difficult enough without some faceless algorithm keeping job listings away from you on the basis of your identity.

This article has been published to coincide with an episode of Mashable's new podcast, History Becomes Her. Listen here.

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez exposes the erasure of women in a world that’s been designed by men for men — and men alone. In this world, women sit shivering in offices set to male temperatures, they hold phones that are too big for their hands, they struggle to reach the rail on the tube set to a male height.

Writer and activist Tracy King ran a successful crowdfunding campaign to send a copy of the book to every MP in the UK in the hope that lawmakers will take action against the gender data gap at the heart of this systemic discrimination. Those books have now been delivered to every single MP.

You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We’re not collecting data specific to women and that means that urban planning, transportation, policy, design, science, and manufacturing are overlooking the needs of half the world's population. But discomfort is just one part of the puzzle. This data gap is also putting women’s lives at risk.

Caroline Criado Perez, author of INVISIBLE WOMEN. Credit: RACHEL LOUISE BROWN

"It's harming women in pretty much every way you can think of," said Criado Perez in the episode.

In this episode — the Season 1 finale of History Becomes Her — Criado Perez and King discuss their campaign to get politicians to take action on the gender data gap.

King also discusses her admiration for Mary Wollstonecraft, writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792.

Tracy King, feminist campaigner. Credit: Rosalind Hobley

Criado Perez shares her admiration for Millicent Fawcett, the suffragist who spent her life campaigning for women's right to vote.

Subscribe to History Becomes Her on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast or wherever you get your podcasts.

This article has been published to coincide with an episode of Mashable's new podcast, History Becomes Her. Listen here.

Women account for around half of the world’s population. But they only occupy around 0.5 percent of recorded history.

Zing Tsjeng is the author of the Forgotten Women book series, four books which aim to address the erasure of women from recorded history. These four books provide fascinating biographies of the leaders, scientists, artists, and writers who are notably absent from our history books.

For those of us who grew up learning a lot about Henry VIII, Oliver Cromwell, Christopher Columbus, and Abraham Lincoln, you might have wondered what women were getting up to during this time. They were very busy, it turns out.

You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Author and journalist Zing Tsjeng. Credit: christopher bethell

In this episode of History Becomes Her, we learn about some of the fascinating women who changed the course of history but didn’t get a mention in the books we read at school. You'll learn about U.S.-based peace activist Concepción Picciotto, Chinese pirate leader Ching Shih, and the Mirabal Sisters, who opposed the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. You'll hear the story of Mary Ann McCracken, a Belfast-born social reformer who championed female equality and campaigned against slavery.

Tsjeng also pays tribute to her grandmother, Julie Wong, who smuggled food to British prisoners of war during the occupation of Hong Kong while raising seven children. "You can be a hero in a very quiet, private way," Tsjeng said of her grandmother. "You don't need to talk about it, you don't need to brag about it. But people still remember you. It's about everyday heroism."

Tsjeng also discuss the role racism, classism, and sexism all intersect to erase women of colour and working class women from history. "Honestly I think women of colour have been erased so much from the historical narrative," said Tsjeng in the interview.

Subscribe to History Becomes Her on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

When the very first set of emoji was designed by Japanese engineer Shigetaku Kurita in the 1990s, pixel-y dots within a 12-by-12 dot grid were about the entirety of what could be conveyed in emoji form. This made for some relatively rudimentary emoji communication back in the day: A heart here; a hand there.

The depth of what you can represent with emoji alone has now vastly expanded, spurring occasional controversy, an entire (admittedly panned) movie, and academic studies about the linguistic importance of those fun little pixels on our screens. Emoji may not be a language of their own in the traditional sense — there's no grammar involved, and they primarily consist of nouns — but there's little doubt that in their relatively short existence they've changed something fundamental about the way we communicate.

As emoji have grown more and more ubiquitous in the years since their initial invention, they've also drawn ire, particularly for failing to represent a diversity of cultures and gender roles. (Even emoji depicting food courted controversy with respect to their authenticity.)

Emoji were no longer just the straightforward hearts and stars of their initial creator Kurita's imagination; they were now signifiers of the world around us, and how much — or how little — you could convey with them served as an unofficial ruling on who and what was valued in the world outside of our screens.

Continuing to make emoji more inclusive, then, isn't just a matter of making texting your friends more fun, according to Paul Hunt, the designer behind Unicode Consortium's first gender-inclusive emoji. (Unicode Consortium is the nonprofit behind emoji standards). The emoji populating our screens give us the framework to imagine the world around us.

In recent years, our virtual world has made major strides with respect to inclusivity. How do we keep the momentum going? Mashable spoke with Hunt over the phone to dive into the past and future of inclusive emoji design.

What it means to create a gender-inclusive emoji

For Hunt, who works as a typeface designer and font developer at Adobe, involvement in the world of emoji started four years ago, when Hunt began work on what would eventually become Unicode's first approved proposal for a gender-inclusive emoji.

The timing there was important: Not long before, in Hunt's telling, gendered representation had explicitly creeped into the "people" figures on typical emoji keyboards. Formerly, the only "people" available were typically the yellow heads you see conveying different emotions, like a sudden flash of 😨 and the ever-useful 😬. (These are meant to be genderless, though Hunt points out there's a "general tendency" to read these as masculine by default.)

As direct representations of gender popped up on emoji keyboards in the 2010s, though, Hunt notes that these emoji often presented a vision of the world composed of rigid gender stereotypes. Women were not shown in many professional roles, instead being depicted as brides and princesses, while men were allowed more dominant, active roles, like bike riding and working as a medic. (You might remember these old emoji keyboards, but you'll notice this has largely been corrected on most keyboards today. Open the emoji keyboard on your phone and you'll likely see female lawyers and astronauts, for instance.)

Of course, there was another gaping hole in early gendered emoji: They only depicted those who express their gender identity within the gender binary, with emoji exclusively capturing gender expression for cis men and cis women. That's where Hunt came in.

"Masculinity and femininity are powerful symbols in our society and they have certain meanings that we all attach to them," Hunt said. "As someone who doesn't strongly define with either, or maybe tries to channel both of those energies, I wasn't always using these hyper-masculinized versions of the male emoji. I wanted there to be an emoji for people like me."

The design process involved testing out different iterations of the proposed emoji and refining by asking friends, family, colleagues, and a subcommittee to see what seemed to be working best.

Drafts of the "person" emoji, now in Unicode Credit: paul hunt

"As a queer person myself, I took it upon myself to research what would possibly be the best way to provide representation for people who wanted to opt out of binary gender. At a certain point, I came to realize that the main visual cue [for emoji] is just hairstyle," Hunt said. "That's the main salient feature between the gendered depictions."

They found that people were able to read an emoji character as existing outside of the gender binary if it had "short-ish" hair with long bits "in places you wouldn't expect to see on a [cis] man." With a working design in place, Hunt then officially submitted a proposal for the emoji. (More on that later.)

The proposal included three different emoji with hair like this; Hunt acknowledged it was really just meant to be a start. All humanized emoji should have an inclusive gender representation, according to Hunt. Though Hunt advocated for that in the initial proposal, a move to Australia made attending Unicode Emoji Subcommittee meetings difficult because of the time difference, and members at the time wanted a slow rollout, according to Hunt.

So Hunt passed off the baton to Jennifer Daniel at Google, who reached out to Hunt to talk about Hunt's work and their point of view on gender-inclusive emoji. Daniel then did work advocating for gender-inclusive representation to be applied to all the different emoji characterized as people for Google emoji, a move that was celebrated upon widespread release in 2019. Apple took similar steps the same year.

The importance of finding the right designer

Ultimately, Hunt's own knowledge and personal experience was crucial in pushing the visual conversation forward with respect to gender inclusivity in emoji. Hunt believes part of the future of inclusive emoji lies in both how they're being designed — and who's designing them. Companies will need to let those familiar with particular cultures and traditions design the emoji in order for more people's lived experiences to be accurately represented, Hunt explains.

By way of example, Hunt points to (the lack of) depictions of indigenous people on emoji keyboards: Though many emoji keyboards offer a variety of skin tones, Hunt says they're "not really sure" we currently have good emoji out there to allow for indigenous people to advocate for their own identities and their own concerns. What's more, Hunt says, indigenous people might not always be looking for assimilation into something like an emoji keyboard. Finding a way forward would have to come from the community itself.

Hunt cites Rayouf Alhumedhi, the young woman who first proposed a hijab emoji, as a great example of what it looks like when those familiar with certain lived experiences are actually at the forefront of designing emoji to depict that experience. And with proper background knowledge, almost anyone can start working on designing new emoji: Alhumedhi herself credits a Mashable Snapchat story with first explaining how to properly submit an emoji proposal.

That brings us to the next step in the future of inclusive emoji, in Hunt's telling: Making them mainstream.

Getting inclusive emoji on emoji keyboards

Though anyone with a notepad can technically dream up an emoji design, to get that emoji to make a widespread impact on communication around the world will almost always require approval from the Unicode Consortium. (Alhumedhi and Hunt both submitted their proposals to Unicode.)

When Hunt's proposal was approved back in 2017, that marked the big leagues, so to speak, when it comes to emoji design: Once an emoji is in the Unicode standards, companies like Apple and Google often follow suit, using the standards to guide the creation of their own emoji. (Indeed, as mentioned previously, Apple and Google have since added more gender-inclusive emoji to their keyboards.)

For an emoji to get selected, it has to meet a fairly extensive set of selection factors. Some of the main selection criteria for new emoji are threefold, according to Unicode:

• "Will the image work at the small size at which emoji are commonly used?"

• "Does the emoji add to what can be said using emoji or can the idea be expressed using existing emoji?"

• "Is there substantial evidence that a large number of people will likely use this new emoji?"

The next thing that needs to be seen for a world with even more inclusive emoji is likely just a more complete understanding of the many requirements necessary to expand their more widespread proliferation, Hunt explains.

Unlike bathroom symbols, where owners of a building can stick up a new sign relatively quickly, Hunt notes that the proposal process takes quite some time. The payoff, though, is certainly rewarding — even just on a personal scale, according to Hunt.

"It's weird, before I started this I hadn't really thought about my own gender that much," Hunt said. "One of the things I was thinking about [when creating the design] was the etymology for the word gender. The word shares the same root with the word 'kind.'"

Hunt went on to explain: "We separate people into different 'kinds' of people, but the kind thing to do is to see everyone as our kin. I hope the work I'm doing … is helping us to be able to see that we're all more similar than we are different."

When Tracy Brabin MP stood at the despatch box in the House of Commons to raise a point of order, she probably didn't expect to be called a "slag".

The senior politician was policed for her clothing when she was simply doing her job. Sigh.

But Brabin — the shadow culture secretary and MP for Batley and Spen in West Yorkshire — was harassed on social media because of the outfit she was wearing, because she dared to wear an off-the-shoulder top in parliament.

Responding to a man's tweet asking "Is this really appropriate attire for parliament?" Brabin addressed the wider harassment she received over her sartorial choice.

Per Brabin's tweet, those comments included being called a "slag," "tart," "slapper," and being asked if she'd "just been banged over a wheelie bin."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Brabin was actually standing at the despatch box in the House of Commons to discuss Boris Johnson's director of communications ordering senior UK journalists to leave before a briefing on the prime minister's Brexit plans. Political journalists subsequently walked out of Downing Street in protest.

"The government’s behaviour in these matters threatens the civil service’s core values of impartiality and objectivity," Brabin said in the House of Commons. "It also brings into question the integrity of future government media briefings and the conduct of their special advisers, and it damages a free and vibrant press, which is central to this parliamentary democracy."

Twitter seemed more interested in Brabin's shoulder than the threat to press freedom, however.

Appearing on ITV's Lorraine, Brabin expanded on her experience of having her outfit targeted by Twitter trolls.

"I do think it's slightly absurd, but we're talking about shoulders which, in the scheme of things, when there's so much else to discuss, it does feel slightly silly," she said.

"I had the chance to push back on behalf of other women," Brabin added. "We also have a duty to call out everyday sexism but also to protect our young girls and give them the confidence to challenge and stand up for how they want to look"

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Thankfully, many people stood behind Brabin in response to her harassment.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The Women's Equality Party expressed support for Brabin, stating "her shoulder is irrelevant."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

"It hasn't silenced me," Brabin told Lorraine Kelly on Lorraine.

Quick ladies, better cover your ankles in case it all gets too much for Twitter.

A new wave of emoji is coming — and boba finally makes the list.

There's plenty to celebrate. The Unicode Consortium, a non-profit that standardizes languages across digital platforms and devices, on Wednesday announced an upcoming launch of 62 new emoji. Among them are a transgender flag, emoji of 55 gender and skin-tone variants, a polar bear, a teapot, and a ... piñata?

The new collection also includes a transgender flag, a polar bear, a tea pot, and a ... piñata? Credit:

Over the past few years, the Unicode Consortium has been working on integrating more diverse, inclusive emoji — a response to criticisms about how it has been slow to address its lack of diversity. This new collection of emoji hints at their continued effort toward making emoji more inclusive, even in the subtle ways in which they represent different cultures.

Boba, which is often associated with Asian American culture, is one way of doing that— as is the transgender flag emoji.

"For trans folk being able to say 'transgender' in emoji and to be out and proud and let our allies visibly support us is a huge deal for our community," Tea Uglow, who helped co-author the proposal for the emoji, said. "We’re really happy to have finally crossed into mainstream culture. It’s been an amazing team effort around the world.”

New emoji typically start rolling onto devices starting September; other platforms release them earlier. Until then, you can think up creative ways to use these new emoji.

The investigation follows a series of tweets by a customer upset over the credit limit given to his wife, as well as the customer service from Apple.

Toxic masculinity is a term with a toxic legacy.

As with many words typically associated with feminist discourse, 'toxic masculinity' is a phrase that's been co-opted by the so-called alt-right.

That's one of the reasons journalist Liz Plank almost removed every single use of the term from her book For the Love of Men: A New Vision for Mindful Masculinity about a week prior to publication — much to the displeasure of her editor.

"I had this thought about that it was going to turn off the very people that I that we desperately need to be tuned into this conversation," Plank told me over the phone.

Plank — who holds a Masters in global gender politics from the London School of Economics — has spent the past four years researching modern masculinity and writing a guide to combatting its toxic form through actionable steps.

Toxic masculinity is a term that, as the New York Times deftly put it, was "an expression once relegated to women’s studies classrooms that suddenly seems to be everywhere." 2019 saw the explosion of this term into the mainstream lexicon after a Gillette razor blade advert questioned what men "can be" and posited the idea that they should refrain from catcalling women and bullying other men. Days prior to the ad's release, the American Psychological Association (ASA) released its first ever guidelines for therapists working with boys and men feeling pressured to conform to traditional ideas about what it means to be a man.

Researchers define toxic masculinity — AKA "traditional masculinity ideology" — as a set of beliefs and behaviours including hiding your emotions or distress, using violence or "tough-guy" behaviour as a way of showing power, and exhibiting an appearance of "hardness".

The combined effect of these constructs and actions is harmful not only to the men who've subsumed them, but also to the women in their lives. One line from Plank's book summed up the destructive impact toxic masculinity is wielding on society: "When half the population gets trained to block emotions, they lose the ability for empathy."

"Every man can remember the first time that they were called a pussy, right?" Plank told me. "Or called the F-word, or when they were told that they were not being a 'real man,' and that they needed to hide their weakness, that they needed to hide this empathy, that they needed to be strong and stoic."

So, how do we go about having productive conversations with the men in our lives about toxic masculinity? Here are Liz Plank's tip for broaching the topic with men you know and love.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Avoid the term 'toxic masculinity'

"First of all, I think that the term toxic masculinity is not the most useful term to bring up especially with someone who is a gender theory virgin," said Plank. "These are words that are being used as weapons by like, Tucker Carlson and Jordan Peterson to signify this idea that people who use these words want to come after your way of life, they want to criticise the way that you were raised by your father that you love and the way that you raised your sons," she added. "That's threatening and difficult to come to terms with."

Since entering the lexicon, toxic masculinity has become a loaded expression — one you can now find in subreddits like r/MGTOW (which stands for Men Going Their Own Way) and r/MensRights. Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson — who's gained a following among the far-right community — appears to reject the concept of toxic masculinity, stating there's a "backlash" and "a sense there is something toxic about masculinity."

Talking to men about the ways rigid gender roles could be affecting their mental health and the way they behave towards women feels more urgent than ever before. It was during a conversation with David Hogg — who survived the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting on Feb. 14, 2018 — that she realised the importance of language in conversations aimed at challenging people's ideas.

"When I asked David Hogg, 'Is gun violence related to toxic masculinity?' he said he spent his whole life trying to talk about gun safety to people who feel very threatened by conversations about gun safety," said Plank. "So, he thinks he thinks a lot about language and challenged me in his answer to think about the language that I was using."

Steer clear of gender theory jargon

So, how do you broach a conversation about toxic masculinity with older men, including our dads? "Someone who has no idea that gender has even impacted their lives is going to feel very uncomfortable about any acknowledgement that this has shaped their decision-making and their behaviors, attitudes, and who they are in the world," said Plank, who advised not using the term "toxic masculinity" in those conversations.

"Even the word gender, the word patriarchy, words that if you have read books and have a lot of knowledge about this, these are words that are familiar to you," she added.

Cutting down on gender theory terminology and asking simple questions will result in more productive conversations, argued Plank. She added that the most "productive and interesting conversations with men" she's had have occurred when she's asked them really simple questions about their lives. "I often don't mention the word masculinity at all," she said.

Start with self-reflection

"One of the most impactful questions I asked men for this book was, 'What is hard about being a man?'" Plank said. "This is a question that I've not had a single man not stare at me for a full 10 seconds before even starting to begin to think about answering that question. Because it's a question they're not really asked and they've never really given permission to ask themselves."

"Instead of coming in with, 'You have all these behaviors that are hurting all the people that you love around you, and you need to take responsibility for it.' Yes, they need to do that. But that's like the second step. The first step is self reflecting," Plank added. "That's where empathy is really important."

I asked Plank what response was the most common when she put this question to men she interviewed. "What came up a lot is that the hardest thing about being a man wasn't necessarily women — it was other men," said Plank. "That's not to say women don't reinforce these patriarchal notions of masculinity and have absorbed them as well." Most of the men Plank spoke to had never talked about these problems with other men in their lives.

The "golden ticket," as Plank described it, from those conversations was, in fact, the sheer diversity of the answers the men gave. "There are a million answers to that question because there's not one way of being a man in the world. There's so many identities, perspectives, and life stories with which masculinity intersects," she said.

"Being a man could mean a million different things to a million different people." Realising that there's no one way to "be a man" is an idea we, as a society, could do well to remember.

Billy Porter has been the talk of the town this week after donning a showstopping dress-suit hybrid to the Tony Awards.

Fashioned out of the Kinky Boots curtain — yes, curtain — Porter's Tony's outfit featured a uterus motif as a statement about women's reproductive rights.

Speaking to Stephen Colbert, Porter talked about social views towards men who wear dresses — and what those views say about how society views women.

"We've moved beyond the idea that women wearing pants is a problem. Women wearing pants is powerful, it's strong, everybody accepts it, and it's associated with the patriarchy, it's associated with being male," Porter explained.

"The minute a man puts on a dress it's disgusting, so what are you saying? Men are strong, women are disgusting? I'm not doing that anymore.

"I'm done with that. I'm a man in a dress and if I feel like wearing a dress I'm gonna wear one."

It is a truth universally acknowledged that there is a face filter for everything, from putting puppy ears on your head to horrifically swapping your face with inanimate objects.

The latest filter trend on Snapchat is gender. Yep, just gender. This filter, in particular, captured people's attention in a way that others haven't, becoming so popular that people have re-downloaded Snapchat, an app seemingly being left in the social media dust, to use it.

The filter is fairly simple: It swaps your features for traditionally feminine or masculine ones. When it rolled out last week, the internet had a field day, with users fantasizing about what it would be like to swap genders. But it wasn't all fun and games for the trans community, who had to witness both their cis friends and strangers suddenly turning the act of "switching genders" into the latest viral joke.

What's worse is that this isn't one of the community-made filters available to download or ignore as you please. It's not just one amateur designer's attempt at humor. Coming from Snapchat itself, this means whatever impact the filter has is directly reflective of the company and its biases. This also allows more people to access the filter without having to actively seek it out, which increases its exposure.

While you're having fun posting about your imaginary chiseled jawline or flawless face of makeup, you might want to consider how this filter perpetuates some pretty whack stereotypes before you post your selfie. After all, casual transphobia looks good on no one.

Snapchat's filter problematically defines gender and presentation

The filter's "male" lens gives users a square jaw, scruff, and short hair. The female lens smooths out a user's skin, lengthens their hair, and adds makeup.

Through these changes, the "gender-swap" filter reveals what the company, and society in general, consider desirable presentations for men and women. That's because when conceiving of the idea of a filter that "swaps" your gender, there are assumptions the creative team must've made.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

a.t. Furuya, youth programs manager at GLSEN’s, told Mashable that, while intended as a "fun" joke, Snapchat is "assuming gender is a binary between men and women and more specifically, physical characteristics of how men and women should present themselves." GLSEN is an advocacy organization for LGBTQ youth.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

When Mashable reached out to Snapchat to learn about its thinking, the company said that new features go along with their core mission of empowering self-expression. Lenses can transform our appearance and the world around us, it wrote, adding that filters are a kind of "community storytelling."

Unfortunately, this "self-expression" forgets the wide spectrum of selves people can express. By creating a filter meant to represent an entire gender, you must choose to buy into certain narratives of what it means to look a certain gender. What features are the most beautiful? What are the "right" features? This assumes that everything else is deviant to the norm or unnatural.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The filter also reinforces the heinous gender binary, implying that "man" and "woman" are opposite genders you can switch between. Furuya said this is limiting for everyone, and contributes to the narrative that there is only one right way to exist. "Nonbinary people have existed for centuries and in different cultures, [and] reinforcing an idea that people are either hyper masculine or hyper feminine creates very narrow boxes for how people can outwardly present themselves."

"Gotcha!" and digital drag deceit

On the whole, seeing cis people "swap" their gender for funsies gives off vibes of the old "man in a a dress" trope. Society says that it's not right for men to do things like wear makeup or have long hair. The sheer existence of trans women under the patriarchy is wrong. One may argue that the reverse trope — that of women donning shorter haircuts and "men's" clothing — is less negative for women, since it can be empowering for women to co-opt masculinity. That is, until it isn't.

Filters like these can be potentially detrimental to trans youth because they delegitimize trans identities, Furuya said. They can create more hurdles for trans people to live authentically without humiliation, violence, and erasure. "For trans students who already do not have laws or policies protecting their identities, this contributes to that discrediting sentiment that our identities are as fake as a Snapchat filter."

With the filter, if you turn your head too fast, wave your hand at the camera, or switch it off, the illusion disappears. Everyone laughs because at the end of the day, it was all just a trick of the eye. The joke here is that gender-bending is fun when everyone can return to "normal" with the flick of a head or the swipe of a finger.

It also doesn't help that men of Twitter and Instagram have been turning their experiences with facetuned femininity into experiments. Suddenly, men are creating fake Tinder profiles with their "female" selfies, catfishing unsuspecting horny Tinder bros, and screenshotting the responses in the name of ... something? Many claim that after receiving tons of unwanted harassment, they now understand how hard it is to be a woman online. The lesson some seem to have learned is an important one, but for others, the catfishing feels like a flippant joke.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The joke, if there is one, relies on the underlying "gotcha!" that comes with convincing unsuspecting cis men of your gender, only to pull the wool from their eyes and laugh at the homosexual panic. Even if it's meant to be light-hearted, the group that's targeted by the normalization of this kind of humor is already vulnerable — trans people.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Your instant transition is another person's dysphoria

The virality of these "gender-swap" posts has meant that the internet has become even more of a casual transphobia landmine than usual. And the excuses fall flat: It's just harmless fun! Let people enjoy things! It might even be empowering! But it's hard to join in when the "fun" involves constantly reminding you of your dysphoria and the daily struggle of transitioning.

Viewing these posts from friends and family could contribute to dysphoria, because trans people are seeing those who are supposed to support and care for them participate in the humor of physical transition, Furuya said.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

On Twitter, many trans people are imploring cis people to think critically about the jokes' consequences. Some feel that the cis community doesn't understand the frustration of watching someone construct — in a single swipe — what transgender people may work at through years of pain and hardship.

Even just taking a moment to consider how mentally and physically exhausting it is to exist as a trans person can make all the difference in creating a more empathic and welcoming internet. Taking a step back can also help cis people consider the ways they interact with and support trans people offline.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

It's almost never just a joke either. Furuya described casual transphobic humor, in online spaces or in everyday culture, as a "snow ball effect" that could lead to harm for the trans community. Letting these jokes slide allows cis people to become more comfortable with the dehumanization of trans identities.

"It is easier to not care about the safety of trans people if we are not a big deal to you," they explain. "When you keep picking away at our personhood, what is left to value? These are how transphobic laws and policies can get passed, this is how trans people get overlooked for jobs, this is the direct impact of trans youth being bullied and unable to finish school."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Snapchat emphasized that it understands how deeply personal identities can be. But it's hard to swallow that when there's a community of people saying the filter makes a mockery of — and belittles — their identities. The way cis people have broadcasted their brief flirtations with bending gender demonstrates just how easy it is to misuse the filter.

Mistakes like this aren't new for the company. Snapchat has gotten into hot water in the past over previous filter missteps, turning what should've been basic marketing campaigns into oh my god this is so racist territory.

It would be easy for fans of the filter to chalk up these criticisms as a few oversensitive opinions to a feature that can be turned on and off in seconds. The novelty will probably wear off by next week. The latest filter is probably already in the works.

But as long as there are photo-sharing apps on the market, facetuning isn't going to go away. That doesn't mean we should blindly put up with the mistakes Snapchat or other designers make. Gender isn't as simple as a filter you can swipe away.

Being a girl or woman is knowing that you're full of complexities and contradictions that society helped create but discourages you from claiming or criticizing.

The doting mother secretly battles depression intensified by the expectation of "having it all" while having no support at home or from most politicians. A black woman is supposed to contain a lifetime of rage while someone casually goads her with racist comments or behavior. The transgender girl is treated like a predator in her school's bathroom and develops crushing anxiety that transphobic people then blame on her identity. Eventually, women lose count of how many times they've been gaslit into thinking their pain is their doing.

Then, when girls and women do seek treatment from mental health providers for their anguish, they often encounter professionals who don't truly see them or their circumstances. Instead, they patronize patients by focusing on their sensitivity or emotional nature. Sometimes they hand out extreme diagnoses that make girls and women feel less capable of handling what they face.

This is exactly the dynamic that dozens of mental health experts wanted to stop when they developed an updated set of guidelines for how psychologists should engage with and treat their female clients. Those recommendations, published today by the American Psychological Association, urge therapists to emphasize resilience and strength; to recognize and understand the role discrimination, violence, and oppression play in their clients' lives; to pay more attention to groups of women who disproportionately experience bias and trauma; and, to use diagnoses only when they are necessary.

"Women suffering from psychological problems need treatment, but that has to be in a more affirmative, more empowering way, and it has to be effective," says Lillian Comas-Diaz, a clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the George Washington University School of Medicine and co-chair of the working group that revised the guidelines.

That message, sent from one of the most influential professional organizations in the mental health field, is bound to leave countless girls and women feeling seen, maybe for the first time in their lives.

Comas-Diaz thinks it's about time that happens. The guidelines were written in 2007, and the expectation is to update them every 10 years. While the previous recommendations contained some of the same themes and guidance, the revisions reflect how the world has transformed in the past decade, making visible identities, stories, and experiences that were once ignored or silenced.

The former guidelines, for example, mentioned "transgender individuals" just once, and only to say the recommendations didn't apply to that demographic. The updated document refers to transgender women numerous times, including to point out that they are at much higher risk for violence than cisgender women. Female veterans, elderly women, immigrants and refugees, and girls and women with disabilities also receive new or heightened attention in the updated guidelines, with an emphasis on their increased risk for experiencing sexual or physical abuse, as well as bias.

Meanwhile, the guideline authors note, women subjected to interpersonal violence are likelier to be diagnosed with more severe conditions. The trauma of childhood sexual abuse can create emotional and psychological distress that, when expressed by some youth, can send kids into the juvenile justice system instead of mental health treatment. And, of course, women are much more likely to experience depression, have more risk for relapse, and endure longer depressive episodes than men.

Instead of framing these research findings as the failure of girls and women to thrive, the guidelines urge psychologists to think more deeply about the impact of outside powers, especially how their clients' life experiences reflect structural injustices and inequality — and how their subsequent pain and suffering is a normal response to what they've lived through.

"In the medical establishment, historically, there has been a view of females as less than, as victims, as helpless," says Lillian Comas-Diaz. "We in psychology also need to add to that a perspective that has to do with the social forces and the history and legacy of discrimination and oppression."

The guidelines may have lofty aims, but they also contain clear recommendations for psychologists looking to adopt or integrate practices that are affirmative, developmentally appropriate, effective, and relevant to girls' and women's unique experiences. Chief among them is to "honor and cultivate" their resilience and strengths, qualities that are often overlooked by mental health providers focused on weakness or fragility.

The document also reiterates the importance of cultural competence in helping psychologists grasp the complexities of a client's lived experiences and respond accordingly with not just treatment tailored to her background, but also helpful community resources, or folk, indigenous, and complementary or alternative healing approaches.

Additionally, the guidelines remind psychologists that some treatments or interventions are based on studies using a homogenous population, most often "White, young, able-bodied, verbal, intelligent, and successful clients," and therefore may not work as well for women and people of color.

"A lot of providers, if they're not culturally competent and humble, they may not be able to help girls and women," says Comas-Diaz.

The new guidelines will no doubt prompt vigorous nodding, maybe even a little rejoicing, from girls and women who've felt like their mental health provider failed to see them as full human beings. That's why they probably won't stir the same controversy as the guidelines for boys and men issued earlier this year by the APA. Those became the subject of numerous stories and op-eds because they challenged the role of stereotypical ideas about masculinity.

Though the guidelines can't be enforced in any way, the revised document gives girls and women proof that they deserve better from their therapists and puts the onus on psychologists to deliver. And that's exactly how it should be.

The real-world ramifications of the gender data gap are all around, us all the time.

From the size of the phone currently in your palm, to the temperature of the office you're sitting in, to the way your car has been built, to the way the medicine you take has been made.

A new book by feminist campaigner and author Caroline Criado Perez has uncovered the dangers of not collecting data about women, and the fact that data bias is putting women's lives at risk.

A new GoFundMe campaign led by writer and activist Tracy King aims to send a copy of the book — Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men — to every MP in the country in the hope that lawmakers will take action about this important issue.

The campaign aims to crowdfund enough money to send a copy of the book to every MP with the aim of getting them to read it and take tangible action. King told Mashable she believes Criado Perez's book has the power to change the world, which is why it's important our lawmakers are aware of the extent of data bias' impact.

Criado Perez spent three years researching and writing the book, which brings together a wealth of information about the dangers of the lack of sex-disaggregated data — data specific to women. The consequences of not collecting data about women means that urban planning, medicine, transportation, policy, design, manufacturing, and engineering are all overlooking women's needs.

King says the reason the book has already proved hugely resonant before it was even published is because women have been going through life with the knowledge that these problems already existed. "We sort of already know this, we low-level know, but we never had the proof before," says King. "Women just went, 'oh thank goodness, there's proof,'" she adds. "We knew we were second-class citizens but we couldn't prove it before."

It goes without saying that it's important that women, the people affected by the data gap, are aware of the book, but it also needs to fall into the hands of people in power who can do something about the data gap, says King.

"The decision-makers, the people in power, they're the ones who make the laws, the regulations, and the policies that directly affect women, how things are built, and how things are made," says King. "And they need to read this book, they need to know the book exists."

The GoFundMe campaign needs to hit its £6,750 goal in order to purchase enough books to send to all 650 members of parliament.

"I don't fool myself into believing all 650 MPs are definitely gonna sit down and diligently read the book and then do something. If we don't ask, we don't try, and if we make enough noise, then some of them, the important ones who're the decision makers in the areas that affect women in engineering and STEM, they might do something."

King feels that female MPs will likely be interested to read the book because they "recognise the issue," but she would like to see male MPs read the book because they might not be aware of the scale of the data gap. "It's the ultimate way to force them to check their privilege," says King.

In an ideal world, King hopes that MPs will start looking at the laws, regulations, and policies that disadvantage women.

"The government funds a huge amount of medical research, and they could make it mandatory to have gender equality in your research funding proposal," says King. "Big changes could be effected if people in power decided, 'well ok, you can't have government funding for something if you're not considering women.'"

"I want every law, policy of regulation that the government touches, I want them to be thinking about how that impacts women," says King. "Do a gender impact assessment as default."

Gender may have been the motivation for over half the hate crimes reported by women in 2018, a new data analysis has revealed.

Despite the prevalence of this category of hate crime, crimes motivated by gender are "currently not recorded" or acted on as hate crimes by most police forces, per The Fawcett Society, a British gender equality organisation.

Figures from the Crime Survey of England and Wales show that there were 67,000 reports of hate crime "based on gender" last year — of which 57,000 were "targeted at women." Respondents to the survey were asked "whether the incident was motivated by the offender’s attitude towards their sex".

The UK's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) defines the term "hate crime" as a "range of criminal behaviour where the perpetrator is motivated by hostility or demonstrates hostility towards the victim's disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or transgender identity." This criminal behaviour can include harassment, assault, intimidation, verbal abuse, threats, property damage, and bullying, per the CPS.

Gender was perceived to be the motivation for more than half of hate crimes reported by women last year, while age — which is also not recognised by police as a hate crime motivation — accounted for 41,000 incidents. Race was the third most common motivation, with 16,000 reported incidents. The data also showed that people aged between 16 and 44 were the most common targets of gender-motivated hate crimes.

In light of the data findings, campaigners have written to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick and National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) Chair Sara Thornton entreating them to support making misogyny a hate crime.

In November 2018, Dick echoed Thorton's assertion that police should not have to tackle reports of misogyny and that it shouldn't be considered a criminal offence, and said police should be focusing on "core policing."

Katie Ghose, chief executive of Women’s Aid, said that the official recognition of misogyny as a hate crime would give survivors "greater confidence that our criminal justice system will treat all forms of violence against women and girls more seriously."

"For far too long, women have not had the confidence to report men’s violence and harassment to the police for fear of not being believed or taken seriously," Ghose said in a statement emailed to Mashable.

"The forces that have taken a proactive approach to tackling the rife sexism and misogyny in our society have not seen an influx in reports of 'wolf-whistling', but rather serious reports of harassment and assault that would have otherwise passed unnoticed," she continued.

Ghose added that the organisation is joining the call for police chiefs to support making misogyny a hate crime so that forces are equipped with ample resources to effectively police "all forms of violence against women."

Sam Smethers, chief executive of the Fawcett Society, said that the data should serve as a "wake-up call" to everyone, but that the findings are "just the tip of the iceberg."

"Women are routinely targeted with abuse and threats online and in our streets," said Smethers. "We know that black women, Muslim women, and Jewish women are particularly affected. The way we tackle hate crime must reflect that.

"We have to recognise how serious misogyny is," she continued. "It is at the root of violence against women and girls. Yet it is so common that we don’t see it. Instead it is dismissed and trivialised. By naming it as a hate crime we will take that vital first step."

Out and about, you've likely experienced gender inequality in your urban environment.

There might be a lack of female or gender diverse bathrooms at a stadium, or a lack of baby changing facilities accessible to men, or something like bad pram access.

It's the kinds of oversight that CrowdSpot and Monash University's XYX Lab are hoping to track in the Gender Diverse Map, a pilot program which launched in Victoria, Australia on Monday.

The map will allow the public to pinpoint instances of inequality in their neighbourhood, and eventually allow decision makers and designers to see the bigger picture.

"In isolation, individual experiences of gender inequality, like a lack of female change facilities at sports grounds, may not seem significant," Anthony Aisenberg, CrowdSpot's director, said in a statement.

"However, when we view them collectively, we see the very real impact inequity has on daily life for women, men, trans and gender-diverse people.

"This valuable information will help councils, town planners, architects, policy-makers and the communities rethink how we care for all people in public places, and to identify design changes that improve public spaces, services and facilities to make our community a better place for everyone."

The Gender Diverse Map is currently only available in the cities of Darebin and Melton. Users can select a place spot, which allows one to note either positive or negative issues with public transport or community infrastructure.

Or they can select a story spot, which is for personal experiences or something one has witnessed. On each spot, users can also leave comments in relation to that spot.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The pilot will be open until the end of February 2019. It's a continuation of the Free To Be project, a mapping tool for women to report harassment, run by Crowdspot and charity Plan International.

"The Map will reveal real, everyday experiences of gender inequality that we may not always be aware of," Nicole Kalms, director of Monash University's XYX Lab, added in a statement.

"It gives us a new way to look at our local community."

The Trump administration intends to legally define sex as strictly male or female. But the science says that sex can be quite varied -- and not so easily boxed into a narrow category.

This past weekend, The New York Times revealed that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has plans to define one's sex based exclusively upon the biological genitalia they're born with -- ostensibly to make the definition of sex more consistent under civil rights laws that ban discrimination.

But herein lies a problem: A person's biological sex doesn't always fit unilaterally into male or female. And perhaps more importantly, one's gender -- how one learns and chooses to socially identify across the male and female spectrum -- can be much more varied.

"The idea that there are two categories that everyone can fit into is just a little bit nutty," Anne Fausto-Sterling, professor emerita of Biology and Gender Studies at Brown University, said in an interview.

"The development of sexual systems is just much more complex," she added.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Yet, such a narrow government classification -- if ultimately adopted as a federal rule after being subject to a mandatory 60-day public comment as soon as this fall -- would inhibit at least 1.4 million American transgender adults from being legally recognized as anything other than the sex they were designated at birth.

"The biology doesn’t say there are two sexes,” Andrea Ford, a medical anthropologist at the University of Chicago, said in an interview.

Biological sexes "do not always correspond in predictable ways or fall neatly into two categories," said Ford.

Beyond genitalia, there are gonads (testes and ovaries), hormones, and chromosomes that can manifest in a multitude of ways.

For example, babies with male chromosomes (XY) can can be born with testes but ambiguous genitalia, which can raise questions of gender assignment. Some women naturally produce lots of testosterone. People born with two XX chromosomes -- who are typically female -- may have a specific gene for male genitalia. And some people live for decades unaware that they share attributes of both sexes.

"It’s convenient for people to organize things into a recognizable category, but there’s definitely an infinity of ways that sex expresses itself," said Ford.

What's more, gender and sex are different, but often strongly linked, said Arthur Arnold, a research professor at UCLA's Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology, in an interview.

Gender, however, isn't restricted by the limitations of our bodies and physiology.

"What we're fundamentally talking about is gender here," said Arnold. "It's really a battle of social nomenclature. Are you going to constrain people by saying they are one sex?"

For instance, people may be uncomfortable with the gender they've been assigned, known as gender dysphoria. Accordingly, "some people may cross-dress, some may want to socially transition," and others may decide to medically transition with hormone therapies or gender affirmation surgery notes the American Psychiatric Association.

There might be something in our bodies or genes that predisposes us towards becoming a certain gender. But as of now, there's not a conclusive sexual or biological explanation for what propels us to choose a gender or place along the gender spectrum.

"It’s a paradox that’s unresolved," said Arnold.

The wide recognition of sexual and gender diversity isn't nearly new.

This makes the government's recent suggestion that there are scientifically just two sexes -- which are determined at or before birth -- perplexing at best and harmful to those who don't fit neatly into those categories, at worst.

Research into gender in general isn't a new area of study.

"This goes back to the 1950s, and it's just gotten more and more clear it's right with time," said Fausto-Sterling, noting early and seminal work by sexual identity researcher John Money.

Centuries before the 1950s, Native Americans recognized -- and accepted -- the reality of other genders. In many tribal cultures, both males and females chose genders that weren't exclusively male or female.

"These highly-respected individuals experienced the gender spectrum fluidly and they were never condemned for who they were," according to the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Yet, in the 21st Century, Trump administration officials seek to put sex, and accordingly gender too, into a box of their choosing.

"It’s an ideological stance that they’re trying to reflect onto science -- but the science doesn’t say that,” said Ford.

Think about what you learned from the fairy tales you heard growing up. Scratch beneath the surface of those grand tales of bravery and everlasting love and you’ll see the gender stereotypes, moral lessons, and a very black and white worldview.

Nikita Gill wants nothing to do with any of that. Instead, the Instagram poet and author wants you to reexamine the fairy tales you grew up hearing and reading.

That’s the point of her new book — Fierce Fairytales: Poems & Stories to Stir your Soul — in which she dismantles the gender dynamics and stereotypes in the childhood fables that have, for centuries, gone unchallenged. When Gill revisited stories she’d loved watching on Disney VHS tapes like a "proper '90s kid" — stories like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Hansel and Gretel — and read them through the lens of adulthood, she was disappointed.

It was the way that Snow White and Sleeping Beauty framed consent that sparked her urge to begin reclaiming and rewriting these narratives. If you don’t recall: both of these fairy tale princesses are fast asleep when they receive their true love’s kiss.

View this post on Instagram

“Looking back I felt like, ‘What?’ This doesn’t seem right. There is no idea of consent!” Gill tells Mashable. “This is not something I want to just read to my children as is. It’s full of quite harmful messages.”

Gill didn’t want to just accept these narratives just because she used to love them. She wanted to turn them on their heads, turn them into tales about people being brave on their own terms, honest about their trauma, and vulnerable just like the rest of us. Tales she would want her future children to read.

In Gill's fairy tales, everyone is their own fairy godmother: Sleeping Beauty is wide awake, and Cinderella's mother begs her daughter to stand up to her abusers. Gill wants Tinkerbell to be allowed to be angry and Hercules to be able to cry. The moral is always the same: you must be true to yourself.

“By taking back these stories and rewriting them for a post-#MeToo generation of young people, we are teaching them to respect themselves and take responsibility for their own choices and decisions,” Gill said.

A lot of fairytales are ancient and many people probably take these 250-year-old morals with a pinch of salt. But, according to Gill, some of the stereotypes put forth by old fairy tales are still very much perpetuated today. The narratives we expose young children to play a big part in how we teach them to view the world, who we praise and who we chastise, Gill says.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Take the perfect damsel in distress, the beautiful woman waiting passively in a dire situation for a man to come and save her. But, is this trope really one we want girls to grow up believing in? Shouldn't we be teaching them to be their own saviours?

“I don’t know a single girl who didn’t read fairy tales when they were young, and we are all influenced by this idea that a prince is going to come and save us,” Gill said. “The idea is that someone will come and save you from your life and your problems, and that that saving is marriage. That is such a harmful thing to perpetuate for young girls.”

The women in fairy tales, Gill argues, are often perfect, both morally and physical, but they are never in control of their own lives or fates.

“We need role models that show that women can not only look after themselves, they can have flaws and they don’t have to be perfect,” said Gill.

One of the darker poems in the book, “Hunger: The Darkest Fairy Tale,” deals with another aspect of that very idea: that women are taught to long for physical and moral perfection. “Hunger” doesn't take place in the magical fairy tale-sphere, but rather, it deals with eating disorders and body image, something Gill herself has struggled with.

“You remind yourself,

‘Hunger is not my friend,’

‘Hunger is not making me stronger ’

‘Hunger does not love me.’

A helpless chant as it rips through your brain.”

The relationship between women’s bodies, food and hunger has been a trope in literature for centuries, just as striving for thinness has long been closely tied to the feminine ideal. On Instagram — a platform where Gill has 458,000 followers — pro-eating disorder communities are common, as they slip past the AI set in place to protect users from harmful content.

Gill included these very real issues – eating disorders and body dysmorphia – into her book of stories set in the magical realm to prove a crucial point about the values and norms we’re taught in real life. Just as you can rethink what was presented to you in fairy tales, you’re allowed to reexamine the messages the real world sends you as well. Such as the idea that being thin is the only valid form of female beauty, that the only route to beauty is through hunger.

“Eating disorders are things that are pushed to us as a magical things, and girls believe the narrative that disease is what’s going to make them fairy tale-like and beautiful,” Gill explains. But as women, we are free to take control over that narrative.

“As women [...] hunger is something we’re told is actually good for us. But we can choose to villainise it, to have hunger be the bad guy," says Gill.

It’s not just the female characters and stereotypes that are problematic. The men in the fairy tales, the Prince Charmings, are also up against it in the realm of fairy tales. In Gill’s retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack is a victim of abuse who only uses the magic beanstalk to crawl away from his demons.

“Men aren’t strong and stoic all of the time. These hyper masculine characters come out as a reaction to trauma of what they faced,” says Gill. “People are flawed, and they suffer. This kind of retelling will make people look deeper at the characters that they have been introduced to.”

View this post on Instagram

By rewriting and reclaiming the fairytales, showing how to look differently at what was given to you, Gill is hoping it will inspire people to reclaim their own narratives. Her message is that your life is yours to shape. That we are not passive in our own trajectories.

“Take charge of your life, fix your life, and do whatever you can to deal with what has happened to you,” said Gill said. “We are all influenced by the idea that a prince is going to come and save us. That someone will come and save us from our life and our problems. But the truth is we all need to grow up and save ourselves,” she said. “Write your own fairytale, and, regardless of your gender, empower yourself.”

View this post on Instagram

Finally, Gill would like to offer an opposing narrative to the happily ever after trope, the idea that we need castles, dragons, and witches to be magical. She’s proposing that the real magic, the real stuff of fairytales is in human existence itself; in love, compassion, human resilience, and beauty.

That humans are capable of connection is the true "sorcery," Gill writes in the poem "For the cynic."

“And somehow you still

genuinely think

that magic does not exist,

that fairy tales aren’t real,

that way people

find each other

at just the right time

at just the right moment

isn’t the most powerful sorcery,”

“I’m a strong believer in the fact that every single one of us have the capacity to be magic in everything that we do,” Gill says.

Women, if you think it serves you well to write the first message after matching with a guy, you're wrong. Men, if you think that financial success is irrelevant in dating, you, too, are mistaken. At least if we are to believe the numbers.

Online dating may have practically revolutionised how we date in modern society, but apparently traditional gender roles still dictate how men and women engage in online courtship.

In a major new study from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), researchers have looked at data from 150,000 – exclusively cisgendered, heterosexual – users on the dating site eHarmony over a 10 year period in the UK. Their findings show that both men and women still exhibit gender stereotypical behaviour when dating online.

The study concludes that online dating has not just perpetuated male dominated initiation, but exacerbated it, since men are 30 percent more likely to write the first message.

When women do initiate contact, it doesn't do them much good. The study shows that women's response rate goes down 15 percent when they are the ones to write first. It puts the inequality in the who-writes-first game down to "learned norms".

The study also argues that since Tinder was introduced the "psychological costs" of messaging has declined for men – they simply care less. To put things in context, Tinder was first released in 2012 and had a billion swipes per day by 2014.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The study also shows that yes, women are more likely to be evaluated on their looks than men. Some of the most important factors for determining women's success were physical traits such as age and athleticism, while men are being judged by their degree of agreeableness and altruism as well as their athleticism. Being clever predicts success for men but not for women.

Men, on the other hand, have more reason to be concerned with the size of their pay check than women, since women are still 30 percent more likely to take income into consideration when looking for a partner. But, the study concludes that, over time, a partner's income is becoming less and less important for both men demonstrating that Brits are generally becoming more and more open to dating people with a different financial and educational background.

So, ladies, please be young and fit and whatever you do, don't write first. Gentlemen, be well-paid, well-behaved and willing to take initiative at all times. Or, you know, go with your gut and be yourself because that's the most important thing.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, Michael Phelps, and Kevin Love all share one thing in common, and it's not their fame.

Instead, each of these men has done something once unthinkable: They've talked publicly about their mental health struggles.

SEE ALSO: 11 times famous men spoke up about mental health

Johnson, an action hero best known for his positivity and pecs, recently described his own bouts of depression and what it felt like, as a teenager, to stop his mother from attempting suicide. Love, a power forward for the Cleveland Cavaliers, wrote an essay in March for the online publication Players' Tribune about experiencing a panic attack. Reynolds, star of the new sequel Deadpool 2, recently told the New York Times that he regularly experiences anxiety. Last December, Phelps, the most decorated Olympian in history, opened up to Today about feeling depressed and suicidal.

These men sell billions of dollars in movie tickets, play on one of the best basketball teams in the world, and make winning gold medals seem easy. They look like paragons of masculinity. They also wrestle with anxiety and depression. That shouldn't surprise us given that mental illnesses are exceedingly human conditions; nearly a third of men have experienced a period of depression in their lifetimes.

But you might not assume that because sharing those stories has historically meant risking your manhood; a man might be called weak or "gay" for revealing his truth. Famous men like Johnson, Reynolds, Phelps, and Love, and their peers, however, are proving it's possible to candidly name their mental health experiences and defeat the stigma that keeps so many men silent.

These voices, and those of countless men working to reduce stigma in their own communities, have arrived at a critical time.

Rates of suicide have been rising for middle-aged men. Time and again, we watch in horror as a disaffected or radicalized young man commits mass murder, or an angry partner kills his wife, and maybe her family, in an act of domestic violence. Following the Parkland shooting in April, the comedian Michael Ian Black implored us to consider how "boys are broken" and then wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about the psychological perils of traditional manhood.

"Too many boys are trapped in the same suffocating, outdated model of masculinity, where manhood is measured in strength, where there is no way to be vulnerable without being emasculated, where manliness is about having power over others," Black wrote.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Though most boys and men will never commit the type of extreme violence that dominates the news, these events combined with public health trends, have forced us to confront why so many men feel bound to a style of masculinity that robs them of a complex inner life and the ability to ask for help when they desperately need it.

"A Resistance They Can't Name"

Warren Spielberg is a psychoanalyst in New York City who's spent most of his life thinking about this question. What he knows for sure is that we must change how boys are raised.

"We 'adultify' little boys, and it's a terrible thing to do, because you take away their childhood," said Spielberg.

And while we typically respond to girls' emotional needs, parents, educators, and coaches will tell boys to toughen up, or resort to the old adage "boys don't cry." So boys develop deep-seated shame about their emotional needs, which can intensify and worsen through adolescence into early adulthood, particularly if they endure experience bullying and ostracization.

By the time adult men arrive in his office, Spielberg said they're often paranoid about being vulnerable.

"The idea of being in a situation of treatment, where you are dependent on somebody, and you’re supposed to open up and be emotional -- it’s a resistance they can’t name," he said.

Justin Baldoni, an actor who plays the reformed playboy Rafael in the TV series Jane the Virgin, is one of the men using his fame to unravel these complex dynamics in public. His web series "Man Enough" brings accomplished men together to talk honestly about life — and their fears.

In a 2017 TEDWomen talk entitled "Why I'm done trying to be 'man enough,'" Baldoni described tiring of "pretending to be strong when I felt weak, confident when I felt insecure and tough when really I was hurting."

In the past, when Baldoni struggled with thoughts of depression, loneliness, or sadness, he found it difficult to reach out for help, he said in an email to Mashable. It's gotten easier, but he added, "even now, somewhere deep inside of me I feel a resistance to it."

That opposition, he explained, reflects what boys and men have been taught about the dangers of emotional vulnerability.

"I also think that we've been socialized to think that by sharing our struggle then we are giving away our power, giving away our secrets, and that those secrets can be used against us, and that's really sad," Baldoni said.

He knows that his web series is reaching men because they privately message him to share their personal reflections and experiences. And yet, Baldoni said, women most frequently post the series to social media, which points to the powerful stigma still attached to the simple act of a man openly acknowledging a desire to better know himself and his emotions.

"Filling That Void"

That famous and successful men like Baldoni have risked vulnerability despite the unforgiving scrutiny of stardom says something about the current cultural moment — and where it's headed.

The moment didn't materialize thanks only to the recent candor of male celebrities. Instead, it's the product of years of grassroots advocacy to raise awareness about mental health. Military suicides in the wake of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars drew our attention to the turmoil in some men's inner lives. Robin Williams' suicide helped us understand that mental illness doesn't discriminate based on income or fame. Public service announcements rejected stigma.

And in the past few years, high-profile men also stepped forward to share their struggles. That list includes the NFL football player Brandon Marshall, former Rhode Island Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, comedian and TV host Wayne Brady, musician Pete Wentz, the rapper Logic, and Prince Harry.

Plenty of pundits and cultural critics see the focus on healthy masculinity and mental wellbeing as a feminist attack on a version of traditional manhood they know and love. The men leading this movement, however, say it's about helping confused boys and men make sense of their role in 21st century families, communities, and workplaces. The goal is to expand the definition of masculinity so that instead of deadening their emotions and burying their pain, boys and men embrace complex feelings as part of their manhood.

Joe Barksdale, a right tackle for the Los Angeles Chargers who recently discussed his experiences with suicide, depression, and childhood trauma for the first time, said in an interview with Mashable that men could push the current moment forward by seeking mental health help if they are suffering in silence.

"It's not about protecting masculinity and upholding some kind of mantle..." he said. "Admitting you have a problem is not the end of the world; dying because you didn’t admit you have a problem is the end of world."

Watching Hollywood stars and sports heroes talk about their struggles and get praise and acceptance in return will certainly convince some boys and men to rethink their own masculinity. But the momentum of this movement can't transform the status quo without broader change.

Gary Barker, president and CEO of Promundo, a nonprofit organization that engages men and boys in gender equality, said that parents and people who work with children, along with celebrities and media outlets, need to model healthy masculinity for boys, offering them opportunities to break out of restrictive gender norms, much in the way we've found ways to successfully do that for girls.

"Are we filling that void that boys are facing in the same ways we’ve done for women?" he asked.

Barker said doing that well requires progress on numerous fronts.

Socially inclined companies that market men's products can reduce stigma and increase acceptance with their ads, much like women's brands have done in recent years. Mental health practitioners can learn more about the unique challenges men face and eliminate stigma in their own relationships with patients. Parents, teachers, and coaches can encourage boys to ask for help, framing it as a sign of strength, not weakness. And we can collectively address the social isolation of boys, helping them to develop close friendships and connections they may be missing.

This amounts to years of hard, consistent work that'll no doubt attract critics who are skeptical of new ideas about masculinity.

But men can instead listen to someone like Baldoni: "My message to any man reading this would be to just know that you're not alone, and know that whether you feel you are a tough, strong, quiet, independent man or someone who's really soft, emotional and quiet … you are still a man."

For more information on men's mental health, visit the National Institute of Mental Health. You can search for behavioral health treatment on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration's website. If you want to talk to someone or are experiencing suicidal thoughts, text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Suicide.org has a list of international resources. 

'The Phluid Project' is New York's first 'gender-free' clothing store, coffee shop, and community space that is checking gender norms at the door. The space was created as an effort to push the boundaries of what people are comfortable wearing, and to create an inclusive space that rejects the binary of traditional retail.

Patrisse Cullors has had a major influence on the Black Lives Matter movement ever since it began in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting. Here she explains what many people get wrong when it comes to how they think about Black History Month and where the focus should be.

As a woman, I have long dreamed of the day I could bite into a chip that has the same density as a menstrual pad.

That day may be coming sooner than I thought. In a new Freakonomics interview with the CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi, Nooyi revealed that the company is getting ready to release special snacks for women that would be designed and packaged differently.

Nooyi disclosed some of the essential gendered (and scientifically unproven) differences between men and women and how they eat chips.

"When you eat out of a flex bag — one of our single-serve bags — especially as you watch a lot of the young guys eat the chips, they love their Doritos, and they lick their fingers with great glee, and when they reach the bottom of the bag they pour the little broken pieces into their mouth, because they don’t want to lose that taste of the flavor, and the broken chips in the bottom," Nooyi told Freakonomics. "Women would love to do the same, but they don’t. They don’t like to crunch too loudly in public. And they don’t lick their fingers generously and they don’t like to pour the little broken pieces and the flavor into their mouth."

Listen. I'm all for ascribing negative social behaviors to men without any scientific basis. But I cannot count the numbers of times I've taken the New York City subway at 3 p.m. and watched men AND women eat a bunch of chicken wings, lick their saucy fingers, then put their nasty ass hands on the communal subway pole. This foul behavior transcends gender, race and class.

That's not stopping Nooyi:

"It’s not a male and female as much as 'are there snacks for women that can be designed and packaged differently?' And yes, we are looking at it, and we’re getting ready to launch a bunch of them soon," Nooyi told Freakonomics. "For women, low-crunch, the full taste profile, not have so much of the flavor stick on the fingers, and how can you put it in a purse? Because women love to carry a snack in their purse."

Congratulations, ladies! What you lack in first female presidents you now have in first female fried chicken mascots and purse-sized Doritos you can squeeze next to your tampons.

Update: Following release of Nooyi's interview and the subsequent internet outrage, PepsiCo released this statement in response:

"The reporting on a specific Doritos product for female consumers is inaccurate. We already have Doritos for women – they’re called Doritos, and they’re enjoyed by millions of people every day. At the same time, we know needs and preferences continue to evolve and we’re always looking for new ways to engage and delight our consumers.”

America, the ambivalent.

Just because you won an award doesn't mean you can't criticise it.

On Sunday, Morgan Freeman picked up a Lifetime Achievement Award at the SAGs.

He had some no-nonsense feedback about the statue, though:

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Here's a close-up of said statue. It does look pretty masculine, doesn't it?

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Freeman's comments were well-received on Twitter.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

As an added bonus, he even paused his speech at one point to call out someone in the crowd for not paying attention.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Such a badass.

After months of condemning pervasive sexual harassment and assault, we've arrived at the #MeToo backlash.

Back in October, when the allegations against Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey made it relatively easy to find your place on the battlefield, few could've predicted that a young woman's account of a painful sexual encounter with comedian and self-proclaimed feminist Aziz Ansari would eventually create a deep schism in the conversation about #MeToo.

That divide, which came into full view this week, emphasized something that the movement's critics have difficulty grasping: Sexual coercion, whether subtle or explicit, is designed to exploit the fact that girls and women are taught from the earliest moments of their lives that other people's happiness and comfort is paramount to their own.

#MeToo demands that we reimagine the way power and gender work in relationship to sex, even if people disagree over how a victim should've responded to unwanted sexual advances. The complex revelations of #MeToo point us toward the difficult work that lies ahead -- teaching girls and boys new skills and values that champion mutual respect and physical autonomy.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Some critics, however, have hinted that modern feminism has encouraged women to think of themselves as victims first. They worry the #MeToo debate is turning women into "snowflakes" who are overly sensitive or cannot assertively reject a man's persistence. But feminism doesn't make women vulnerable to victimhood; we, collectively as a society, have long done that work by insisting in small and large ways that girls and women must be soft and compliant. And we further sabotage women when we insist that their routine victimization is somehow their fault, and not the revolting product of cultural norms and expectations.

Charlene Senn, a professor of applied social psychology at the University of Windsor, has studied male violence against women and girls for many years, focusing on developing an effective education program that would provide women with knowledge, confidence, and skills to detect risk early and defend their sexual rights.

What other research has shown, and Senn has noticed herself, is that women experience "emotional obstacles" when confronted with men who use pressure and persistence in sexual encounters.

Even the most confident and assertive women, she says, can still struggle with the prospect of making a scene, appearing impolite, or seeming downright hostile. Many women are taught to maintain social relationships or not hurt people’s feelings, and they feel friction unique to their personality and circumstances when required to defy expectations of stereotypically feminine behavior.

"Some women have a lot of these obstacles, some have few, but very few have none," says Senn. "Those [obstacles] seem predominant over the other parts of your brain saying there’s something wrong here, this isn’t what I want. How do I get out of here? How do I stop this?"

Senn developed a program for college-age women that teaches them how to overcome those barriers using a variety of techniques. The point of the EAAA Sexual Assault Resistance Education Program, known more recently as Flip the Script, isn't to put the burden of rape prevention on women. Instead, it reflects the reality that women urgently need tools that help them advocate for their own safety and physical autonomy -- something pop culture and brand-driven interpretations of women's empowerment simply can't teach.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Flip the Script is a 12-hour course designed to help college-age women improve their ability to assess the risk of being sexually assaulted by an acquaintance, partner, or stranger, and develop evidence-informed strategies to deal with that threat.

The program encourages women to trust themselves and more quickly acknowledge danger while helping them explore ways to overcome the emotional barriers that make it difficult to reject a man's unwanted advances. It includes self-defense training so women know how to fight against assailants, including acquaintances, who are larger or more powerful. Finally, it does what many educators and parents will not: offer science-based information about sex, sexuality, and safer-sex practices, with the goal of helping women communicate about their desires.

"We need to normalize that women are allowed to ask for what they want," says Senn. "Men’s desires, their wishes for sexual activity, are expected to drive the whole show, and we need to seriously undermine this."

A 2015 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the risk of rape was significantly lower for women who participated in Flip the Script than it was for those who were just provided access to brochures about sexual assault.

While the program is designed only for college-age women, its success suggests that it takes far more than self-righteous lectures about personal responsibility and empowerment to help women break free from a lifetime of learning that others' needs -- especially men's sexual desire -- should be met first.

"I really think that one of the challenges for doing any of this work in a very deep societal way," says Senn, "is we have to imagine a world in which little children are not forced to kiss people they don’t like ... or hug people that their parents want them to hug ... and that making a fuss would be negatively received."

The basic act of consistently supporting girls (and boys) when they express their discomfort or anger, instead of chiding them for being rude or impolite, could instill in them a courage far more powerful than tossed-off instructions to defy, by any means necessary, a man who's using pressure or force.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

We could also stop portraying, in television, film, sex ed, and our personal conversations, girls and women as the coy gatekeepers of sex who secretly want nothing more than for a man to whittle away at their defenses. Some women may harbor that fantasy, and that's fine, but making that our collective benchmark for healthy, pleasurable sex is practically criminal.

Julie Lalonde battles such myths and stereotypes constantly in her work as an educator who focuses on ending sexual violence. Lalonde, who is based in Ottawa, says the most discussed subject when she talks with girls and women is their feelings of being coerced, manipulated, and shamed into sex. Often they try to engage in the least amount of sexual activity with the hope that they can safely escape the situation.

If that strikes you as the definition of bearing a torch for victimhood, remember that gently declining or even forcefully saying no to a man's wishes, sexual or otherwise, can come with emotional, physical, and social consequences.

When women, for example, become accustomed to men calling them a bitch on a busy sidewalk because they won't respond to catcalls, you can't blame them for carefully calibrating their exchanges with men to avoid gendered humiliation -- even if it means experiencing another form of degradation. Part of what we need to teach boys and men is how not to punish a woman when she disagrees with or rejects them.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

When Lalonde speaks with men, she tries to reach them with the message that the status quo is an insult to their emotional intelligence, with its characterization of men as hapless because they're not mind readers.

Aziz Ansari, for instance, actually heard his date express her discomfort with his advances because he acknowledged that she said she didn't want to feel forced into sex and "hate" him. After pausing in his pursuit of her, he started up again by kissing her and allegedly saying, "Doesn't look like you hate me."

In other words, he heard her objections and decided to keep pressing anyway.

"Men need to be talking to men and boys about power," says Lalonde. "You push until you get told no is a fundamental lesson that we give young men."

It's no wonder, then, that women's sexual encounters with men often leave them feeling helpless, exploited, or victimized. #MeToo demands that we take those women and their grievances seriously; their experiences are a reflection of the culture we have created around gender, sex, and power, not the product of hysteria and weakness.

Now it's up to us, critics and supporters alike, to do our part in radically transforming that culture. No man should believe he's justified in pursuing a woman against her wishes, and no woman should gaslight herself into believing that's something to simply be endured.

This weekend marks a year since millions of nasty women (and men) marched in protest following the inauguration of Donald J. Trump.

March On, a new organization branching out from the Women's March movement, wants to take a "bottom up" approach to the resistance.

Founded by people who organized and led sister Women's March events around the country, March On is using this weekend's anniversary to launch "Operation Marching Orders," a tech-driven campaign to crowdsource an agenda for political change. That agenda will put into words what the movement is fighting for in advance of the 2018 midterm elections. It may also become a set of demands or expectations of political candidates and elected officials.

The project begins Saturday with the debut of an interactive Pol.is poll that allows people to vote on value statements (example: "We need a new political party of the left that takes no money from corporations").

People can agree, disagree, or pass and propose their own statements, which are also subject to a vote. Once machine learning analyzes that data, the goal is to understand participants' common values, how their opinions diverge, and what issues are most important to them.

"This movement is the people’s movement, it belongs to the people," says March On executive director Vanessa Wruble. "We can’t impose what we think this movement wants. We need to hear from the movement itself."

The split between Women's March and March On has largely been amicable in public, but it hints at the tension over which political and organizing strategies best engage the millions of people who showed up to protest last year, some of whom became fixtures at demonstrations and town hall meetings in their own communities.

Wruble, who previously served on the Women's March national committee, wants to effectively hand the mic to people on the ground, with an assist from Pol.is' technology and artificial intelligence.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

People who participate in the March On poll must register their email address. Statements submitted by users will be heavily moderated for duplication and trolling.

Colin Megill, cofounder of Pol.is, describes the tool as a survey created by the people who take it, which is then analyzed by an algorithm designed to see beyond binary beliefs and instead pull out nuances in people's political positions.

The results, he says, "give a snapshot of the landscape of opinion amongst a bunch of people who’ve never talked to each other about these issues."

Pol.is is used by private companies, public and academic institutions, and governments in Canada and Taiwan.

One of the key challenges for March On is enlisting a diverse group of participants. Otherwise, the values and priorities expressed by users risk reflecting narrow slices of the moderate and liberal American electorate. Wruble is aware of that possibility and says March On is working with many partners, including local leaders who participated in the Women's March, to distribute the poll widely amongst different networks and communities.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Once the poll closes on Feb. 4 at midnight Pacific Standard Time, Pol.is will analyze the results and provide the insights to March On leadership. From there, March On will use that information to draft a "declaration for the future" that reflects participants' values, principles, and high-priority issues.

That grand vision wouldn't be complete, of course, without some kind of massive in-real-life turnout. The end game for March On in 2018, says Wruble, is to send people marching in the streets (or by caravan and rally) to vote on Nov. 6 in the midterm elections.

"We want to take the movement's creative spirit and intergenerational spirit and point it toward something that can really move the needle, and that is the vote," says Wruble.

If March On can begin its efforts with an interactive poll and culminate in a huge showing at the polls, it'll indeed become a fascinating player in American politics.

The video game industry continues to be overwhelmingly white, male, and straight, a new study from the International Game Developers Association shows.

In a survey published Monday, the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) surveyed 963 people working in the games industry and data from respondents found that when it comes to diversity, 74% of workers are cis males, 61% are white/caucasian/European, and 81% are heterosexual, despite the majority of respondents claiming diversity in game development to be "very important" or "somewhat important" to them.

The survey compiled data based on answers primarily from people who are actively working in video game development or publishing, as well as small percentages of people who have been laid off from games industry jobs and people who are looking to work in the games industry, study the games industry, or are otherwise involved with the games industry.

"The DSS (Developer Satisfaction Survey) should be troubling for every person who loves the creation, business, or play experience of games," wrote IGDA in the introduction to the study. "While the overwhelming majority of game developers recognize the importance of diversity, game development as a profession can still be unwelcoming, with half of survey respondents asserting that they do not believe there is equal treatment of developers, and half of respondents witnessing or experiencing inequity."

Disconnect from audiences

The IGDA survey received the most responses from people born in the United States — with people from the U.S. making up 40% of survey respondents — but the balance of respondents' ethnic identities don't reflect the demographics of the countries they're from.

Of the 963 respondents:

• only 1% of survey respondents identified as Black, African American, or African

• 4% identified as Hispanic or Latinx.

• 23% identified as female (with 75% of respondents identifying as male)

• 5% identified as transgender or "other"

• 19% identified as non-heterosexual

These results reveal a big disparity between the community of developers making games and the audience of gamers playing them.

A Pew Research Center study from 2015 shows that 19% of Hispanic people and 11% of black people in the U.S. would say the term "gamer" describes them well. Only 7% of white people would say the same.

Another portion of that same study examines how men and women identify with gaming. According to the study, 50% of men have played video games and 48% of women have played video games, although only 15% of men and 6% of women describe themselves as gamers.

Part of this male/female disparity in gaming may come from the hostility and harassment that women face in gaming communities. For instance, a 2015 study showed that males were more likely to be hostile toward low-skilled female players in Halo 3 than they were to low-skilled male players.

Additionally, male gamers involved with GamerGate — a loose group of gamers that have routinely harassed and threatened women since 2014 — may dissuade women from seeking jobs in the games industry.

Even though 84% of respondents said diversity in the games industry was important, actions speak louder than words. The majority of respondents (58%) felt that the industry did not grow any more diverse over the last two years.

Bridging the gap

Some game developers and gaming communities are fighting to improve diversity in gaming and the games industry.

Developers like Culture Shock Games and Dim Bulb Games bring in diverse voices in their games — including notable projects like We Are Chicago and Where the Water Tastes Like Wine — to make sure different demographics are accurately represented or are a part of the creative process.

There are also gaming communities like Smash Sisters, which hosts Super Smash Bros. tournaments for women around the country, encouraging women to compete in an otherwise male-dominated space.

Additionally, organizations like Girls Who Code work to encourage young girls to learn how to code, a vital part of the game development process, and potentially inspire them to seek jobs as programmers.

But as it stands right now, the video games industry has a long way to go before its diversity problem is solved.

The New York Times is hoping to win new subscribers by broadcasting a chilling ad highlighting its sexual harassment coverage during Sunday night's Golden Globes ceremony.

While visually striking, the ad takes a risk by focusing on the "he said/she said" conceit, a framing that has long troubled survivors whose accusations are met with doubt and skepticism.

The 30-second spot features just black text on a white screen. It begins in silence as the words "He said. She said." appear one after the other. As a haunting sound gets louder in the background, the phrase "She said." begins appearing in rapid succession.

Then a new white screen reveals three sentences in quick order: The truth has power. The truth will not be threatened. The truth has a voice.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The ad is meant to tout the Times' role in finally making public what was long known in corners of Hollywood: numerous women had been allegedly harassed and assaulted by movie mogul Harvey Weinstein for years. That threw open the gates, both in journalism and in pop culture, for the #MeToo movement to take new form.

The ad was created by the firm Droga5 and is part of the Times' broader "The Truth is Hard" campaign, which launched last year.

Some might read the new ad as telling victims their accusations count only when there are enough people to share the same story.

But Julie Matheny, associate creative director at Droga5, told Ad Age, that the spot is meant to upend conventional wisdom.

"We thought that using language that has been used to silence women in the past and turning it on its head was a simple way to show the clear distinction between the way the world was merely a year ago and the way it is now," Matheny said.

Since the blockbuster story on Weinstein, the Times has shone a light on sexual harassment and misconduct in other industries, including auto manufacturing and hospitality. It had also previously covered sexual harassment in Silicon Valley and at Fox News.

Airing during one of Hollywood's biggest annual bashes, the new spot is a fitting reminder of how the Times can transform culture with its investigative reporting. Many female celebrities are planning to wear black to the ceremony to protest sexual misconduct in Hollywood.

David Rubin, senior VP and head of brand at the Times, told Ad Age that its campaign is targeting potential subscribers who believe journalism is important but don't yet pay for it along with other subscriptions to music and entertainment. Rubin also downplayed any concerns about the ad's message.

"If you're supporting the Times, you're helping the stories to happen," he said. "That's what we want the advertising to be about. It's not meant to be an ad about a cultural topic, it's about the role our journalism has played in it."

Of course, once an ad reaches an audience of millions there's no way to control its narrative, but the Times will probably earn some new customers and make its existing ones feel pretty good about spending money to support its work.

When historians look back on 2017 and try to describe the profound cultural upheaval that brought down Hollywood titans and powerful politicians, they'll no doubt struggle to capture the ache and fury of women who spent their lives silenced by abusive men and finally decided they'd had enough.

There's no tidy or sober way to describe the rot that women knew festered in our social, professional, and political institutions — a decay that once couldn't be named or fully exposed, until it was.

When the accounts are written by those with more hindsight than we currently have, one man should play the starring role, and it's not movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. It's another master showman, the one we call president of the United States.

The election of Donald Trump, who admitted to grabbing women's genitals against their will, to the nation's highest office confirmed what many women knew, and it triggered a visceral awakening for others. Despite being well into the 21st century, America still clings to the notion that women are vessels whose bodies can be owned by men for pleasure.

As it turns out, though, confronting that ugly reality helped produce a dramatic shift in attitudes about gender. This might seem obvious based on the blockbuster success of the film Wonder Woman, or the unapologetic reckoning of the #MeToo movement, whose "silence breakers" were named "Person of the Year" by Time. It was clear in the defeat of accused pedophile and Trump-backed Senate candidate Roy Moore, whose retrograde policy views and racially divisive beliefs led to critical voter turnout among black women in Alabama.

These bellwether moments are evidence of how women are increasingly embracing a pose of cultural and political defiance. They also collectively suggest women show no signs of tempering their outrage in 2018, a year that will bring Congressional midterm elections, the possible end to Robert Mueller's investigation of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, and new clashes over issues like immigration, health care, and race. That's not to mention any unforeseeable conflict sparked by Donald Trump's penchant for publicly demeaning women who oppose him.

If the newfound enlightenment when it comes to gender equality and politics seems like a passing fad or a liberal fever dream, that shift is showing up in a way we can quantify: public opinion.

Tresa Undem, partner in the polling firm PerryUndem, has spent the past 17 years asking people about their views, and she's used to tracking the slow pendulum of change swing toward a new consensus. But in the past year, Undem has witnessed an intriguing phenomenon.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

When she polled 1,058 voters from across the nation and political spectrum in late November, she discovered a surprising percentage of people altered their views in the past year. A new majority of voters thinks the country would be better off with more women in office, a figure that jumped from 52 percent to 69 percent between 2016 and 2017. Those who said sexism is a "big" problem in American society increased from 30 percent to 44 percent during the same time period.

People aren't keeping these feelings private, either. Seven in 10 respondents in Undem's poll said they've talked to a friend or family member about issues related to gender equality. That marks a major increase from last year, when just 49 percent said they'd had similar conversations.

We can arguably trace this transformation partly back to Donald Trump, says Undem. When she analyzed the results of her nationally representative December 2016 poll of 1,302 adults, she found that the number one predictor of engaging in activism after the presidential election was feeling upset by Trump's behavior on the Access Hollywood tape.

Undem believes that Hillary Clinton's loss, despite the tape's existence, played a significant role in the increased percentage of people who believe the country would be better off with more women in office.

While these are just two polls, Undem is struck by the swift evolution in participants' opinions.

"I don’t know that I’ve seen these kinds of differences in my career in polling," she says. "In my view, what’s happening right now is a result of a lot of things, but one of the biggest things was the Access Hollywood tape."

Neera Tanden, an informal adviser to Clinton's presidential campaign and president of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, knows what Undem means.

In April, Tanden tweeted, "I don't think the country has understood how psychologically wounding it was to so many women that Trump won after the Access Hollywood tape." The observation has remained her pinned tweet for months. It's received 33,000 likes and 16,000 retweets.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

"If you look at this year, the beginning, middle, and end of the year, it's fueled by what I hear as a primal scream for women’s equality," Tanden says.

Indeed, people demonstrated by the millions in January's Women's March. Women were prominent voices in protests against Trump's travel ban, the decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and Congress' attempt to repeal Obamacare, among other political battles. They dressed up as characters from The Handmaid's Tale to protest restrictions on reproductive rights, and they confronted racism on the left in tense exchanges on the private Facebook group Pantsuit Nation.

Women ran for office in unprecedented numbers and notched historic victories. Charlotte, North Carolina, elected its first black female mayor in the city's history. A transgender woman unseated a conservative Virginia lawmaker who authored a "bathroom bill" that would've required people to use the restroom that matched the gender listed on their birth certificates.

And when the media's attention wasn't trained on the liberal women who form the backbone of the resistance movement, Trump's own tweets reminded the public why they oppose him in the first place. Whether he was harassing and insulting women like Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski, Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fl.), or Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Trump frequently found ways to illustrate his taste for uniquely berating women who defy his authority.

It's a wonder, then, that national news organizations barely revisited the dozens of accusations of sexual harassment and assault against Trump for the first half of the year, even as they helped drive women's opposition to Trump's agenda. (The White House maintains all of the women are lying.)

"This man did this terrible thing, he wins, and the media treated it like everything got wiped out by the election," Tanden says. "But women said: 'I didn't forget what he did.'"

Tanden believes that Democratic elected officials, including a star like Sen. Al Franken, should also be held accountable for sexual misconduct.

When people warn Tanden about the possibility of a backlash against the #MeToo movement, she offers a different take: "#MeToo, in my view, is a backlash to Donald Trump. I don’t think it’s an accident that we had a gigantic discussion of sexual harassment and assault and what it means for women reaching their potential. It's a cultural response to misogyny taking over the White House."

The fact that Republican leaders haven't taken women's opposition to Trump seriously worries Evan Siegfried, a Republican strategist and author of GOP GPS: How to Find the Millennials and Urban Voters the Republican Party Needs to Survive.

In January, Siegfried wrote a New York Times op-ed imploring his party's leadership to learn from participants in the Women's March. That advice, he says, has gone unheeded and may help spell the party's doom in the 2018 midterm elections.

Siegfried finds that particularly troubling since the GOP has long faced criticism that it wages a "war on women," and Trump isn't helping the party's case. Instead, Siegfried describes Trump as "steroids" that are making the symptoms of that problem far worse.

"Women are disgusted with the Republican party for a myriad of reasons," he says, noting the impact of the Access Hollywood tape and the #MeToo movement. "At the same time, among Democrats and progressives, organizations are taking anger, the most abundant renewable energy source invented in the world, and harnessing it and making it productive."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

That poses a real threat to the GOP's grip on Congressional power. If women who oppose Trump help drive Republicans from office in the midterm elections, it could put the House of Representatives in the control of Democrats, who'd be willing to investigate the assault allegations against the president and have indicated they're considering the possibility of impeaching him.

Neither Undem nor Tanden see an imminent end to the current cultural and political moment. Undem continues to be surprised by sentiments shared in focus groups, including the feeling that people are still energized to fight Trump's agenda. Tanden believes that women, including those who are entering politics and activism for the first time, are only just getting started.

"There are backlashes and forward movements, but my basic view is Donald Trump is giving rise to a new wave of feminism that will transform the country," Tanden says. "It will be women that defeat that him."

When a domestic violence survivor files the legal paperwork for a restraining order against an abuser, the process is often complicated, emotional, and time-intensive.

While there's no shortcut to make that experience less painful or nerve-wracking, Dorna Moini, a lawyer who's represented numerous survivors pro-bono, wants to make it more efficient. That's why she launched HelpSelf Legal, a fee-based site that uses artificial intelligence to enhance the process of filling restraining order paperwork.

"It would be nice to have everyone have a lawyer to help them through the process," says Moini, "but the reality is that there aren’t enough lawyers."

A report published by the Legal Services Corporation, a nonprofit established by Congress to provide affordable or cost-free legal aid, found that there aren't enough resources to adequately address more than half of the 1.7 million legal problems low-income Americans will experience this year. That includes domestic violence and related requests to obtain a restraining order.

Moini, who is personally funding the company, wants HelpSelf Legal to fill that gap.

The service's AI was trained on prior restraining order filings, so it's programmed to help the user avoid making mistakes that could lead the court to reject the paperwork, like neglecting to answer required questions. It also adapts to the user's responses. If a petitioner says that an abuser owns firearms, it leads to a clear prompt about whether they want the court to consider removing those weapons from the abuser's possession.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

HelpSelf Legal is currently only available to users who file in the California court system, though Moini plans to expand to other states, and offer additional services to people who want to file legal paperwork regarding an eviction, guardianship, and child support. An individual can use the service for $15 to obtain all the documents required for filing the restraining order. Moini is offering it to pro-bono lawyers and nonprofit agencies on a sliding scale.

Some lawyers and nonprofit staff who work with survivors in California, however, have concerns about people using HelpSelf Legal without the guidance of an attorney.

"I love the idea of using AI as a tool to help survivors, because usually new technology is used as a tool to abuse survivors, but having that so automated does raise some red flags for me," says Adam Dodge, legal director of Laura's House, a domestic violence agency and shelter in Orange County that also offers counseling, community education and legal assistance.

Dodge worries that users may not understand the different types of protections they can request. Those include protection for other family members, spousal support, and child custody. He's also concerned about survivors going through an emotionally difficult process by themselves. Nonprofit advocates who help survivors file for a restraining order typically discuss the filing process, who will serve the paperwork to the abuser, how to develop a safety plan, and what it's like to attend court hearings about the order.

Stephanie Penrod, managing attorney for Family Violence Law Center in Oakland, shares similar reservations. (Moini previously volunteered for the nonprofit and contacted Penrod for feedback on HelpSelf Legal, but there is no formal partnership between the two organizations.)

Penrod imagines that a HelpSelf Legal user might make certain requests, like asking for no visitation with children, that could strategically backfire. Courts, for example, are looking to preserve parental relationships when possible, but a survivor wouldn't know that without the guidance of an attorney.

"Any low-cost or free representation with an attorney is always going to be an asset and it offers a great support," Penrod says.

When that's not available, Penrod says survivors can seek assistance from courthouse self-help centers, which can provide help with paperwork as well as referrals to local nonprofits. But she also knows such resources can be limited depending on the county, and sees potential for a service like HelpSelf Legal, particularly in rural counties where survivors can't access low-cost aid.

That's exactly the scenario that Moini envisions when she thinks about who her company might be able to help the most. For survivors who must find a way to travel hours to a courthouse or clinic and arrange for child care, starting the process online could save them time and money.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Once users complete the paperwork, they are given additional information about filing the order, developing a safety plan, and going to court. A blog post directs them to legal aid providers in every California county. The site includes disclaimers that HelpSelf Legal doesn't provide legal counsel and that users may want to consult an attorney before filing their paperwork.

Dodge believes the site may be an important tool to survivors with less complex cases, but would like to see it offered at no cost to a survivor and in collaboration with a nonprofit. He'd also like automated referrals for direct services after a user completes paperwork. Provided consent and confidentiality can be maintained, Dodge would prefer the nonprofits to reach out to the survivor directly.

Moini says she's still in the process of building partnerships with agencies and courts across the state to increase users' access to legal aid.

"We're trying to get our product out and see how people like it," Moini says.

Whatever happens next, the launch of HelpSelf Legal has drawn attention to a little-known but widespread problem that the smart application of technology could one day improve.

"The goal in building this company is very broad," Moini says. "It's to provide access to justice for all kinds of legal tasks that low- and moderate-income people are disproportionately affected by."

If you've experienced domestic or intimate partner violence, you can call the National Domestic Violence hotline at 1−800−799−7233. Additional resources are available on its website.

After Democrat Doug Jones upset his opponent Roy Moore in the election to choose Alabama's next senator, the celebration on Twitter featured a recurring theme: white people thanking black women for voting en masse to deny Moore a victory.

Exit polls show 98 percent of them cast a ballot for Jones, and many election observers credited his surprising win to black women's turnout. Most black men also voted for Jones, but two-thirds of white women and nearly three-quarters of white men chose Moore.

Black women, in other words, became the symbol of resistance in an election that captured our attention with the horrifying prospect that Alabamians would send to the United States Senate a racially divisive candidate accused of predatory sexual misconduct with teenage girls.

But to some black women who read the tweets and watched #BlackWomen trend on social media, the gratitude felt like a hollow gesture. For them it evoked the "mammy" trope; the black woman as a one-dimensional figure who is delighted to tidy white people's messes and come to their aid after calamity. A racist device, the mammy has no role other than to tend to white families and their needs.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

That's why Leslie Mac, a black woman and co-creator of Safety Pin Box, found the tweets of gratitude disturbing, particularly in the absence of tangible support like financial and institutional resources to help black women advocate for their communities and run for office. The tweets also felt disingenuous in the shadow of widespread voter suppression that undermines black people's ability to even participate in the political process.

"I don’t know what I can do with your gratitude," she said. "I have no use for it, quite frankly. What are you materially going to do to show your thanks, and not just say it?"

By Wednesday morning, versions of that question began to overcome the chorus of appreciation. Mac posted several tweets to that effect, calling on people to support black women with their time and money.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Kamala Harris, a black Democratic senator, wrote that Americans must do more than congratulate black women. "Let's address issues that disproportionately affect Black women — like pay disparity, housing & under-representation in elected office," she wrote.

Activist Renee Bracey Sherman called out organizations that don't have black women in leadership roles but nevertheless tweeted positively about their role in Jones' victory.

The satirical site Reductress published a story with a headline that spelled out the tension: "White Women Thank Themselves for Thanking Black Women Today."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Mac felt the moment, which credited black women with saving democracy and America, provided a clear example of how white supremacy operates.

"It takes the motivations of black people and distorts them through the needs of white people," she said. "That is white supremacy in a nutshell."

Nadia E. Brown, associate professor of political science and African-American studies at Purdue University, said that the "mammy" trope is so ingrained in American culture that it's hard for white people to see.

"These are folks whose politics are in the right place," Brown said of the thankful tweeters, "but they don’t have enough historical understanding or cultural openness to understand why this might be problematic."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Brown, who is black, personally posted a tweet that read, "Black women save the world." She has also dedicated her academic research to interviewing women of color who run for elected office and identifying barriers to their success.

The insights from her work, Brown said, may offer people more concrete ways of supporting black women. She's found that black women, in particular, have to ask for financial donations more frequently than their white male counterparts, and get less money when they do successfully fundraise.

They also often face resistance from Democratic Party leadership. Through anecdotal interviews, Brown has found that the Democratic Party is the last organization to sign-on to supporting black, female candidates. When those women do win an election, they rarely receive key leadership roles, or those positions are severely curtailed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

If people truly want to support black female Democratic candidates, Brown suggests holding party leadership accountable for providing them with equitable financial support and leadership opportunities.

She also urges people to look beyond shared policy preferences and ask follow-up questions about how issues like healthcare, incarceration, and policing affect black women and the communities they represent, giving extra scrutiny to life-threatening disparities.

"It's about understanding that it’s not just enough to share the resources and act like we’re on the same playing field," she said. "Black women have different experiences and challenges."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

For her part, Mac hopes people will see Jones' victory as an opportunity to prioritize the needs and concerns of all black women.

"We are legitimately and literally fighting for our lives right now," she said. "The decisions we make are centered there. I hope we can get past surviving and get to thriving."

On Monday morning, NBC's Megyn Kelly did what the cultural and political moment demanded: She ceded much of the spotlight on her hour of the Today show to three women who say President Donald Trump once demeaned, groped, or kissed them without consent over the past decades. They are among at least a dozen women who've accused Trump of sexual misconduct.

Kelly may be a complicated woman, who is both revered by some as a pseudo-feminist for her public confrontations with Trump and Bill O'Reilly and loathed by critics who see her Fox News legacy as the work of a "racial demagogue," but her exclusive interview with Trump's accusers should be required viewing for anyone who believes it's too late to make Trump accountable for his behavior -- or doesn't believe we should reckon with it at all.

While the women first went public more than a year ago, the 30-minute interview gives each of them a fresh opportunity to share a detailed account. Jessica Leeds recalls being groped by Trump on a flight 30 years ago. Samantha Holvey, a former beauty pageant contestant, talks about how Trump appraised Miss USA participants like "a piece of meat" and invaded their dressing room to ogle them. Rachel Crooks shares how Trump kissed her without consent while she worked at a company located in Trump Tower. The women amplify each other's experiences by building on different emotions: disgust, powerlessness, shame, and anger.

Kelly plainly asks the women what it was like to learn that 52 percent of white women voted for Trump. She wants to know how it felt when Trump was sworn in as president.

"We are private citizens and for us to put ourselves out there, to try to show America who this man is, and especially how he views women, for them to say, ‘Meh’ we don’t care,' it hurt," said Holvey. "And so, now it’s just like, alright let’s try round two, the environment is different, let’s try again."

The conversation, happening at what might as well be your kitchen table, makes the viewer confront the claims of harassment and assault anew. And it puts front-and-center the reality that Trump and many Republicans are content to undermine these claims until they vanish from public view.

Midway through the segment, Today received a statement from the White House that Kelly read on air: "These false claims, totally disputed in most cases by eyewitness accounts were addressed at length during last year's campaign, and the American people voiced their judgment by delivering a decisive victory." (In fact, the claims have not been "totally disputed" by "eyewitness accounts.")

It might have been easier to sell that spin prior to the #MeToo movement, but morning television shows and major papers can no longer act as though the lingering questions over Trump's past behavior aren't part of a timely or relevant public debate.

The recent resignations of Democratic lawmakers John Conyers and Al Franken over claims of sexual misconduct have set new expectations for how politicians should be held accountable. And Trump's own embrace of senatorial candidate Roy Moore of Alabama, who's been accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls when he was a district attorney, has created new scrutiny of the president's tolerance for sexually predatory behavior.

The interview is no doubt a savvy ratings play -- something that Kelly's troubled show could use right about now. But it's also a public service.

Kelly took Leeds, Holvey, and Crooks seriously. While she acknowledged that political motivation could be at play in some allegations against officeholders, she gave each woman a chance to explain that their Democratic politics didn't drive their decision to step forward. That won't go far with the conspiracy theorists watching at home, but it may convince a skeptical middle-aged woman who supported Trump that perhaps it's time to hold him accountable in ways she hadn't considered before.

Kelly isn't the kind of host who will tell her viewers how to think or feel. She won't condemn the president outright. Liberals also won't like her quip about how there were plenty of reasons to vote against Hillary Clinton. But unless you work in the White House or got on the #MAGA train and are never looking back, it'll be hard for anyone who watches this half-hour interview to pretend we can ignore Trump's accusers any longer.

Kelly may never say those words aloud, but you get the sense that's exactly how she wants it.

If you have experienced sexual assault, you can contact the free, confidential National Sexual Assault hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673), or access 24-7 help online by visiting hotline.rainn.org.

In July 2016, female Adobe employees based in the U.S. were making 99 cents to every dollar that the company's male employees were making. The software company vowed to close that pay gap by the end of the fiscal year.

On Thursday, Adobe announced that it has followed through on its promise, Fortune reports. Women in Adobe's U.S. offices, the company claimed, now make $1.00 for every dollar made by male employees.

Compared to the national average, Adobe's one-cent gap was miniscule.

As of September, women nationwide were earning 80.5 cents to men's dollar.

But compared to the largest technology companies, Adobe is actually late to the game. Facebook and Microsoft announced last April that they had eliminated gender pay gaps between their employees. Apple and Intel also announced gender parity in 2015.

Many of these companies boost a far from gender-balanced workforce (Adobe's is only 30% female), so there's more work to be done, but it's promising to see technology companies, rumored for so long as "boys clubs" taking the initiative to spur change.

So much of our life is determined by algorithms. From what you see on your Facebook News Feed, to the books and knickknacks recommended to you by Amazon, to the disturbing videos YouTube shows to your children, our attention is systematically parsed and sold to the highest bidder.

These mysterious formulas that shape us, guide us, and nudge us toward someone else's idea of an optimal outcome are opaque by design. Which, well, perhaps makes it all the more frustrating when they turn out to be sexist.

Enter Google Translate, the automated service that makes so much of the web comprehensible to so many of us. Supporting 103 languages, the digital Babel Fish directly influences our understanding of languages and cultures different than our own. In providing such an important tool, Google has assumed the responsibility of accurately translating the content that passes through its servers.

But, it doesn't always. Or, perhaps more precisely, where there exists a gray area in language, Google Translate can fall into the same traps as humans.

That seems to have been demonstrated by a series of tweets showing Google Translate in the act of gendering professions in such a way that can only be described as problematic.

"Turkish is a gender neutral language," tweeted writer Alex Shams. "There is no 'he' or 'she' - everything is just 'o'. But look what happens when Google translates to English."

The results, which he screengrabbed, are painful. "She is a cook," "he is an engineer," "he is a doctor," "she is a nurse," "he is hard working," "she is lazy," and so on.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

And this is not a Turkish-to-English specific problem. Taika Dahlbom shared a similar outcome when she translated Finnish to English.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

So what is going on here? A Google spokesperson was kind enough to partially fill us in.

"Translate works by learning patterns from many millions of examples of translations seen out on the web," the person explained over email. "Unfortunately, some of those patterns can lead to translations we’re not happy with. We’re actively researching how to mitigate these effects; these are unsolved problems in computer science, and ones we’re working hard to address."

This explanation fits in with the general understanding that currently exists. It all comes back to those algorithms that drive machine learning-powered services across the web.

Essentially, when an untold number of biases (gender or otherwise) exist in our literature and language — biases, like, that nurses are inherently women or engineers are bound to be men — these can seep through into Google Translate's output.

We've seen this before, as recently as October. It was only last month that another Google service — the Cloud Natural Language API — was spotted assigning negative values to statements like "I'm queer" and "I'm black."

Even that wasn't a wholly new observation. An August study in the journal Science found "that applying machine learning to ordinary human language results in human-like semantic biases."

It seems that, in attempting to build an automatic translator that can approach a human in its ability, Google may have managed to pick up some rather human-like limitations along the way.

This story has been updated with a statement from Google.

UPDATE: Nov. 30, 2017, 2:50 p.m. PST This story has been updated to include an apology Lauer issued Thursday morning.

Matt Lauer spent the past two decades on the Today deploying his goofiness and matter-of-fact interviewing style to win over television audiences.

On Wednesday morning, however, viewers awoke to the news that Lauer also engaged in workplace sexual misconduct so grave that NBC fired the million-dollar star. Lauer issued an apology Thursday.

"Some of what is being said about me is untrue or mischaracterized, but there is enough truth in these stories to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed," he said.

This routine of watching successful men stripped of their power feels depressingly familiar in the month-and-a-half month since exposés revealed Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein as a serial predator who harassed and assaulted women. (Weinstein maintains his encounters with his victims were consensual.)

Since then, several influential men who once shaped news coverage and the conversations we have every day lost their perch atop media organizations as a result of allegations of abhorrent behavior. There is simply no way that behavior, which requires a sickening conscious or unconscious endorsement of misogyny, didn't poison how these men reported on and viewed the world at large.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

While the public regarded them as respected, objective authorities on the day's news, they concealed their own twisted views of gender and power, or perhaps couldn't even muster the necessary self-reflection to see their actions and biases clearly.

When you watched these men deliver the news, and trusted their impartiality or judgment, it was actually based on a deep-seated lie about their honorability.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This list of male media executives accused of harassment in the last two months is long and includes author and former NBC political analyst Mark Halperin, top NPR editor Mike Oreskes, NPR chief news editor David Sweeney, and CBS' This Morning co-anchor Charlie Rose. That doesn't count Bill O'Reilly, who Fox News fired earlier this year, or pop culture icons like Kevin Spacey and Louis C.K., whose work is typically held up as a benchmark of creative excellence.

Even as I was writing this column, news broke that Minnesota Public Radio fired Garrison Keillor, former host of the long-running variety show "A Prairie Home Companion," after accusations of inappropriate behavior.

By mid-afternoon, Variety published a story detailing more allegations about Lauer, including that his door could be locked from a switch beneath his desk and that he exposed his penis to at least one colleague he summoned to his office. Several women had complained to NBC executives prior to Monday's complaint, according to Variety.

While Lauer and these other men may have tried to draw a stark line between their private misconduct and their public persona, William Ming Liu, a professor of psychology at the University of Iowa, says they probably failed.

"It is impossible to keep that kind of facade up," says Liu, who is also editor of the journal Psychology of Men and Masculinity. "You can’t keep those biases from infiltrating."

For journalists, says Liu, the rapid-fire nature of interviews makes it extremely challenging to reign in those impulses at every turn. Beyond the second-by-second nature of live television, Liu says that deeply rooted misogyny -- along with other types of discriminatory views -- is bound to touch every aspect of a journalist's work, whether it's the care they take when describing an event or their sensitivity to the context of the day's news.

Twitter users were quick to point to illustrative examples following Lauer's ouster, including his combative exchanges with Hillary Clinton at an election forum that featured him engaging with Trump on friendlier terms. A 2012 clip resurfaced of Lauer starting an interview with the actress Anne Hathaway by asking about how paparazzi published photos of her accidentally flashing onlookers at a premiere. Lauer asked if she'd learned a "lesson" from the incident.

Variety reported that Lauer exerted considerable control over the Today's editorial choices and that he frequently dismissed stories about cheating husbands.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Similarly, some critics had long questioned Halperin's treatment of Clinton, which seemed steeped in distrust and resentment. Halperin was accused, among other things, of rubbing his erect penis against the shoulders of female colleagues during his tenure at ABC News. He denies the claims, but the allegations portray a man subtly or explicitly uncomfortable with treating women as equals.

Liu says that while men like Lauer and Halperin, or anyone else recently accused of harassment or assault, would likely insist they harbor no ill will toward women, their misconduct tells a different story.

"The outward articulation and description of themselves and their controlled behavior may be different, but in private spaces and less public spheres, these implicit biases make an appearance much more automatically," he says.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

For years, these men have been collectively paid at least tens of millions of dollars for their unimpeachable news authority -- a professional distinction that's rarely bestowed on their female peers who possess the same credentials and skill. They've operated in a system that handsomely rewards the perception of objectivity, which is perversely both something that men feel they are the arbiters of, and something that only men of certain backgrounds can claim.

"The idea of trying to be objective in anything we do clearly comes from multiple levels of privilege," says Liu, noting that people from marginalized backgrounds often cannot afford to take a both-sides-are-equal approach. "If there are no consequences to any of the identities you hold, then you can say and do anything you want."

As Time reporter Charlotte Alter pointed out on Twitter in the wake of Lauer's dismissal, men frequently suggested that women's analysis of Hillary Clinton's candidacy was "biased," or "subjective," or "opinion."

"When women wrote about Hillary, it was a 'feminist take,'" Alter explained. "When men wrote about Hillary, it was 'the truth.'"

In other words, men like Lauer, Rose, and Halperin, could set the agenda for the news-consuming public without broad skepticism of their motives or character.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Aside from the examples of sexism that infiltrated their work, it's hard to measure the small and large ways their conscious and subconscious ideas about gender roles found their way into the coverage we read and watched during their long tenures. It's also a depressing reality to contemplate.

It's doubly disturbing to consider that the same dynamic plays out with regard to journalists' views of race, sexuality, gender identity, and class. Yet the industry's obsession with a certain strain of objectivity frequently helps elevate white men whose worldview is anything but unbiased; it just might take a sexual harassment or assault scandal for the public to realize the bait-and-switch.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Matt Lauer's downfall is the latest in a series of painful revelations about who we are willing to anoint as a chronicler of our era. Just because a media personality claims the mantle of impartial authority, doesn't mean he's earned that privilege. Such a distinction, in fact, is frequently just a mirage reflecting the hope that what happens in some people's lives can be reduced to a simple, convincing narrative.

The men who've been selling that illusion often have their own secrets to keep.

Disclosure: I worked at NBC News Digital (formerly msnbc.com) from 2011 to 2012. In my role, I occasionally worked with Today digital and broadcast staff. I was also a freelance contributor to Today.com until mid-2014. During that time, I heard no rumors or allegations about Lauer's behavior.

There are moments that Sylvia Acevedo, CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA, just can't forget.

There was the time a college counselor at her high school in Las Cruces, New Mexico, scoffed at Acevedo's desire to study engineering. "Girls like you don't go to college," she recalls the counselor saying, in a reference to her Mexican ethnicity.

And there was the time when Acevedo won a competitive four-year scholarship to study engineering, but the male judges were so incredulous of her abilities, they insisted on interviewing her personally. Acevedo remembers one of the judges saying she represented change, and "change for the sake of change is not progress."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

These experiences might have deterred Acevedo from going on to become one of the first female Hispanic rocket scientists in the country, were it not for the Girl Scouts. Years before the college counselor and the scholarship judge undermined and mocked Acevedo's potential, she'd already discovered her aptitude for science — along with her confidence — thanks to the Girl Scouts.

"I always had the possibility of success," she says, "but because of the inflection point of Girl Scouts in my life, it made the success a probability."

Now, Acevedo is one of the most influential public figures urging girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math. She sat on the Girl Scouts board for years and officially became the organization's president earlier this year, after holding the position on an interim basis.

Last week, she took center stage at Dreamforce, the annual software conference hosted by Salesforce, and made an incredible pitch: Help Girl Scouts raise $70 million so that it can move more than 2.5 million girls into the STEM pipeline by 2025.

Though the initiative reflects the long-term shift toward a STEM economy, it also seems like an ambitious gambit to increase Girl Scouts membership, which dipped in recent years and stands at 1.8 million girls and 800,000 adults. Fewer volunteers and families increasingly pressed for time and money have played a part in the membership downturn.

Drawing in new Girl Scouts is even more urgent given the Boy Scouts' recent decision to bring girls into its ranks. So the hyper focus on STEM isn't just a natural instinct for Acevedo; it's also a savvy move to make the Girl Scouts stand out — not only from the Boy Scouts but from the narrative that all Girl Scouts does is sell cookies. That hasn't been the case since the organization's founding, but Acevedo knows that cookie sales are how most people encounter Girl Scouts.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Rob Acker, CEO of Salesforce.org, the software company's nonprofit arm, has noticed the Girl Scouts' increased use of digital technology to reach and engage girls, volunteers, and alumni. (Girl Scouts pays to use Salesforce software.) He's confident that the organization can both expose girls to STEM skills and increase their confidence in those fields.

"There is no better role model to inspire and provide hope for girls across the country than Sylvia," Acker said in an email. "Because of her background and unique vantage point, she recognizes the jobs of the future and the need to provide girls with the skills necessary to succeed in this new world, which is something we’re very focused on at Salesforce.org."

The so-called tech pipeline is a controversial subject in Silicon Valley. Some say there are plenty of qualified women to hire, but they face rampant subtle and explicit bias in recruiting and retention. Others look at the number of girls and women taking Advanced Placement and college STEM courses and argue it's just not enough to meet demand or lead to improved workplace diversity. The more likely explanation is that both factors account for tech's lack of diversity.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

But Acevedo believes Girl Scouts is uniquely positioned to help its young charges develop the resilience and leadership and problem-solving skills to succeed in the male-dominated industry.

When Acevedo imagines the future of STEM, she sees millions of tech-literate girls and women working to make the world a better place, from "healing" the ocean to curing cancer to improving cybersecurity.

"Things are going to happen that we never imagined," she says.

That sense of wonder has marked Acevedo's life and career. Decades after her first Girl Scouts campout at Apodaca Park in Las Cruces, you can still hear the thrill in her voice as she describes the experience. She could ride her bike to the campout, so she decided to earn her bicycling badge for the occasion, which meant learning how to change a tire and memorizing traffic signals.

The one-night event marked the first time she slept in a tent, ate S'mores, and felt awestruck by the sky's constellations — or what she she describes as "diamonds on black velvet."

"I remember just, like, being mesmerized by the experience," she says. "How much more fun could I have?"

Acevedo's troop leader noticed her intrigue and shared the names of the constellations, including the Big and Little Dipper. If Acevedo were a superhero, this moment would mark the beginning of her origin story: girl marvels at universe, and though she's first reluctant to explore her superpower (engineering) because it's not what all the other girls are doing, she's encouraged by an elder (the troop leader who encouraged her to pursue a science badge) and never looks back.

Acevedo went on to work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she developed algorithms, and separately, analyzed data from the Voyager's flyby of Jupiter. She ultimately spent much of her career on the marketing and business side of tech in roles at IBM, Apple, and Dell.

Now, everywhere she looks in Girl Scouts programming, there's a STEM tie-in. Pools have underwater robotics activities. Girls who take up archery will also learn how to calculate arc, velocity, and trajectory.

The group's badges increasingly reflect the STEM focus as well. The Girl Scouts introduced 23 STEM and outdoor badges this year. Cybersecurity and space science badges will roll out over the next two years. The $70 million pledge includes plans to build regional STEM centers of excellence across the country.

"Girls' imagination and potential will be unleashed," Acevedo says.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Anika, a 17-year-old from from Cupertino, California, is one of those girls. (Girl Scouts doesn't disclose members' last names for safety reasons.) When she was a Brownie, boxes with different science projects would arrive for her troop. That fostered her interest in STEM. So did entering into a First Lego League competition with her troop, and later, meeting with Silicon Valley executives as a Girl Scout.

Anika was at Dreamforce when Acevedo made a surprise visit to more than a dozen Girl Scouts learning to code. They gathered around her, visibly awed by her celebrity.

Acevedo handed out her coveted "CEO patch," which features symbols and images that sum up her life experience: Sigma because she loves numbers, Infinity to honor infinite potential, and Jupiter, the subject of her work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. But Acevedo didn't just explain all of this to the scouts. Instead, she quizzed them. Hands shot up in the air, and the girls eagerly identified Sigma, Infinity, and Jupiter.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

"Before I met her, I knew the basic information," Anika says about Acevedo's background. "But to see this patch and see an actual role model who’s had a career in [STEM] despite many obstacles ... She's taking her time to make an impact on future generations of girls. It enforced my determination to pursue a career in STEM."

That's exactly what Acevedo wants. Despite a lifetime of personal success, she's not content unless she's able to "give a hand back" to help another girl or woman succeed — a core Girl Scouts philosophy.

"We just don’t want her to learn a skill — she has to do something to improve the world with it," Acevedo says. "That’s what being a Girl Scout is all about."

If you think Hollywood's the only creative industry suffering gender discrimination and bias, check out this new short film series on the art world.

A project by art platform Artsy, supported by Gucci, the three-part video series breaks down gender inequality in the art world and how female artists disrupted this, let's call it, absolute bullshit.

The series is separated into past, present and future. The first video, "Past," features some art world heavyweights, including sculptor Barbara Zucker, co-founder of A.I.R. Gallery (the first artist-run gallery for women in the U.S.), alongside artist and activist Faith Ringgold, figurative painter Joan Semmel, early new media pioneer Lynn Hershman Leeson, and art advisor Todd Levin.

"Women make babies. Men make culture," said a scathing Semmel in the film. "Every woman had stories of being excluded," said Hershman Leeson, who made up three fake male critic reviews of her own work to be picked up by a gallery.

The next part, "Present," is due for release Nov. 20, featuring total boss Miranda July.

UPDATE: Nov. 8, 2017, 8:24 p.m. PST This story has been updated to include Mike Sington's statement and apology about his tweet featuring Millie Bobby Brown.

Millie Bobbie Brown, the 13-year-old actress who plays Eleven on the hit Netflix series Stranger Things, has been on a weeks-long press tour promoting the show's new season.

Everywhere she turns up, whether it's Good Morning America or her show's premier party, Brown looks playful, chic, and glamorous -- just like you'd expect a young teen to dress when she's famous and has access to incredible fashion.

Except some comments about Brown's fashion choices have led to criticism that she's being sexualized when she's just barely a teenager.

Mike Sington, a retired senior NBCUniversal executive, for example, recently shared a photo of Brown at the premiere wearing a black long-sleeve leather dress and sleek hair with the caption "Millie Bobby Brown just grew up in front of our eyes. (She's 13!)"

On Tuesday, Sington issued a statement via Twitter clarifying that he didn't intend to contribute to "the objectification or even sexualization of a minor."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The Daily Mail obsessed over photos from the premiere, featuring them in a story with the headline "Hello stranger! Millie Bobby Brown, 13, is almost unrecognizable with new longer hair at Stranger Things 2 premiere in LA."

Sington's original tweet caught the attention of former child star Mara Wilson, who didn't hold back with her response, "Knock it the fuck off". She then tweeted about how uncomfortable it can make teen girls to hear "strange men" comment on their physical appearance.

"The people that were mostly a threat to me as a child were not Hollywood insiders, but grown-up male 'fans,'" Wilson, 30, wrote.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Wilson's response went viral, offering a biting reminder of how quick American culture is to sexualize girls, especially when they grow up in the public eye. Just think of the 1999 Rolling Stone cover that featured a 17-year-old Britney Spears wearing a bra and boyshorts while holding a plush Teletubby. Or when Miley Cyrus, then 15, appeared on Vanity Fair wearing a blanket and red lips.

Spears and Cyrus may have been eager and willing participants, but such imagery often points to an intense pressure on adolescent and teen girls to seem sexually available, especially in Hollywood.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

"There's no way to go from child star to adult star without being a sexy adult star," says Sharon Lamb, a professor of counseling and psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

The Daily Mail article, for example, focused on Brown but then commented on the appearance of adult women who also attended the premiere, lumping a 13-year-old in with women decades older than her.

Lamb, who coauthored a 2007 American Psychological Association report on the sexualization of girls, says young female stars often face pressure from handlers and executives to become more marketable for adult acting roles by embracing their femininity and sexuality.

Meanwhile, adolescent and teen girls are typically interested in exploring their appearance because it's exciting and fun, says Lamb. It can mean looking fashionable and attractive to friends, and yes, maybe even to the public. But there's a big difference between being fully in control of those decisions and being coerced into them.

There's also a stark line between recognizing that a teen is maturing and turning that into commentary or media coverage with undertones about that person's sexuality. That applies to both boys and girls, as a model recently proved when she said on social media that Brown's 14-year-old co-star, Finn Wolfhard, should "hit me up in 4 years."

Lamb says that we might consider treating teen stars similarly to the children of presidents -- certain subjects and commentary are just off limits. She also believes the push to diversify Hollywood behind-the-scenes and create more complex on-screen roles for girls and women can also help stop the sexualization of girls in pop culture.

"I think all people want to be sexy at times, and part of sexual development is experimenting with that too, but the message from the Hollywood community is you’re only [valuable] when you’re sexy," says Lamb, who bets that would change with more women writing and producing films and television shows.

The #MeToo movement, which sprung from stories about sexual harassment and assault in Hollywood, also has the potential to shift the subtle and explicit emphasis on sexualizing girls. People are no longer willing to tolerate the culture that makes it possible to see girls and women simply as sex objects.

"We need to retrain the men looking at this to say, 'This isn’t somebody up for sale,'" says Lamb, referring to pictures of Brown. "It’s not for you. It’s not for your sexual consumption."

Anyone who's confused about how to look at a fashionably dressed 13-year-old can make that their mantra.

In the week since actor Anthony Rapp said Kevin Spacey made an unwanted sexual advance toward him as a teenager, more than a dozen men have come forward with similar accounts.

Their stories indicate the celebrated actor has spent decades preying on boys and men, using his power and influence to manipulate and sexually harass or assault his victims. Spacey has denied these allegations.

In the wake of the viral #MeToo hashtag, which women used to share their personal experiences with sexual violence, the revelations about Spacey's predatory behavior have helped expose the unique stigma that frequently prevents men from making their accounts public.

The actor and former NFL player Terry Crews shed light on these dynamics when he recently tweeted about how a powerful Hollywood executive publicly groped him, and he felt powerless to say something. Harry Dreyfuss, an actor and the son of Richard Dreyfuss, wrote an essay for BuzzFeed about how difficult it was for him to confront being groped by Spacey.

"I did a lot of mental gymnastics to normalize my experience," Dreyfuss wrote. "What I see now is that when it comes to sexual abuse, there is no such thing as a 'minor' assault. And if telling this story will help others speak up, then it is worth it."

Indeed, at least one in six men have been sexually abused, according to 1in6, a nonprofit organization that helps men who've had unwanted or abusive sexual experiences.

David Lisak, president of the board of directors for 1in6 and a psychologist who's long studied the long-term effects of childhood abuse in adult men, says harmful stereotypes about masculinity, along with common myths and misperceptions about sexual violence, make it difficult for men to report harassment and assault.

"Anything having to do with sexual assault or sexual violence is permeated by stigma," Lisak says. "But the nature of that stigma does change from person to person, culture to culture, and also across gender. For men, the very nature of masculinity conflicts so starkly with experience of being sexually violated."

Specifically, boys learn early on that men must be strong, not vulnerable, and that sexual abuse means they've been made helpless in some way. How men resolve that inner conflict can shape the course of how they cope with what happened, Lisak says.

In his experience, the majority of men who've been abused struggle for a long time. They might experience overwhelming self-doubt and feel they don't "measure up" to society's idea of what it means to be a "real man." And some men find the conflict between victimization and stereotypical masculinity "absolutely intolerable," so they pretend the abuse never happened.

"What you see in men like that is oftentimes they become shells of masculinity..." he says. "There's a rejection of any kind of vulnerability."

Beyond the social pressure to appear conventionally masculine, men are also silenced by myths about sexual violence.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

They may worry that people will conflate abuse and assault perpetrated by another man with their sexual orientation.

"What we need to constantly assert and reassert, is that this, at its core, has nothing to do with sexuality or sexual orientation," Lisak says. "It happens in every community; anybody is vulnerable to being subjected to an abuse of power like that."

Another false perception is that harassment and abuse happen only to young boys. Lisak says that people now generally understand boys do experience sexual abuse because of national scandals involving school teachers, Boy Scout leaders, priests, and politicians. And yet, "when it comes to men, a lot of people have the sense if you’re a real guy, this wouldn’t happen to you," Lisak says.

The cultural stereotypes around gender, including portrayals of men as versions of a physically dominant and invincible Jason Bourne, make it difficult for people to understand that men can also be rendered vulnerable by intoxication, intimidation, and threats.

Lisak says that personal testimonies about harassment and abuse have tremendous power to "erode" the stigma that keeps men from talking about their experiences. To help men come forward, 1in6 created an initiative called the Bristlecone Project, which features portraits and biographies of male survivors.

"We want ... individual men choosing to come forward, [to] talk about what happened to them, and erode that stigma and make it easier for men to talk to somebody," says Lisak. "Not bury themselves or be buried by the stigma or the shame."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

He believes the public can also play an important role in dismantling that stigma by analyzing their assumptions about sexual abuse and viewing male survivors beyond the lens of gender.

"The cultural messages that shape the stigma we’ve been talking about, those things live in everybody, we all absorb them," says Lisak. "Erode them by being confronted by the humanity of another human being. Look into their eyes. He’s a human being, he experienced something awful. It can happen to anybody."

If you have experienced sexual assault, you can contact the nonprofit organization 1in6, which maintains a helpline for male survivors. You can also call the free, confidential National Sexual Assault hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673), or access 24-7 help online by visiting hotline.rainn.org.

Imagine a sex ed class that taught you not only basic anatomy and disease prevention, but also encouraged you to reclaim sexual pleasure after a traumatic experience, helped you unlearn the shame associated with growing up in a religious or homophobic household, and non-judgmentally listened to your curiosities.

Now imagine that class taught by a sex ed professional who's bringing such wisdom straight to your laptop or smartphone via livestream.

What you've just envisioned is O.school, a new 18-and-older digital platform launching Friday that hopes to build a safe online environment for people to learn about sex and pleasure in real time.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Andrea Barrica, O.school's 27-year-old founder, describes the platform as a middle ground between Planned Parenthood and online porn -- a community that's neither too clinical or singularly focused on gratification.

The idea for O.school sprung directly from Barrica's personal experiences. Raised by Filipino immigrant parents in a Catholic household, Barrica didn't begin earnestly exploring her sexuality as a queer woman until just a few years ago. She was disappointed in what the internet, with its "heteronormative" articles on how to give a better blow job, had to offer.

"What if you’re queer and grew up in a religious household?" Barrica says. "None of the resources spoke to what I was looking for."

It wasn't until Barrica started attending in-person workshops with sex educators in safe spaces that she felt knowledgable and empowered. As an entrepreneur with startup experience, Barrica is looking to mimic that experience with O.school, which will host livestreams with well-known sex educators who focus on topics like masturbation, body image, shame, trauma, and spirituality, and can answer questions via chat.

For now the company will use a pay-what-you-can model for each livestream, though it may eventually introduce paid replay access and a premium membership option. Viewers can also tip the "pleasure professional" who teaches their course.

The first livestream, debuting Friday at 4 p.m. PT, will feature Barrica talking about the importance of pleasure and sex education in the wake of #MeToo, the viral campaign that prompted women around the world to share their experiences with sexual harassment and assault. She loathes the narrative that the "most [women] can ever hope for is not to be assaulted."

While Barrica wants O.school to be for anyone who feels out of touch with any aspect of their sexuality, she's particularly hopeful that women, LGBTQ people, and people of color will find refuge in the platform, which is moderated by humans -- not an algorithm.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Moderators have been trained to recognize classic signs of abuse and harassment, like aggressive self-promotion and excessive use of all caps and emoji. They will have the power to ban or mute viewers who violate O.school's community guidelines, which include no tolerance for racism, sexism, transphobia, and other types of bias and bigotry.

At the same time, moderators will work to "call in" viewers who may not know or understand how to use inclusive language when talking about different identities. Think, for example, of someone who is supportive of transgender rights, but uses outdated or offensive terms to describe gender identity.

"We have absolutely no tolerance for abuse, but we also want to be tolerant of people who haven't had this education," she says. "It's part of our job to share that language in an accessible way."

Barrica is frank about other challenges she'll face in growing O.school. It's nearly impossible to advertise content about sexuality on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook without violating the companies' rules against porn ads. That means Barrica has to rely on word of mouth and cultivating potential viewers at in-person events like sex education workshops.

But Barrica remains hopeful, partly because she's personally experienced the benefits of holistic sex ed.

"These people are medicine to the world," she says, referring to pleasure professionals. "What keeps me up at night and gets me up every day is how do we make that available to as many people as possible."

With the launch of O.school, she's just a little closer to making that a reality.

Donald Trump's administration recently rolled back federal rules that keep contraception co-pay free for 62.4 million women, so a coalition of reproductive rights organizations are taking their fight straight to the president.

This week, the Keep Birth Control Copay Free campaign launched an online tool inviting people to submit an invoice to the billionaire president for the annual amount of their contraception.

But the tool, which created more than 15,000 invoices in the 24 hours after its launch, is meant to generate more than just a heaping dose of outrage.

Both Trump and the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the federal rules on copay-free birth control, receive a copy of the invoice. Each bill is also submitted to the Federal Register as an official comment opposing the proposed rule. The comment period lasts until Dec. 5.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The administration's rule went into effect immediately earlier this month. It allows any public or private employer to deny employees coverage of FDA-approved contraception if they cite moral or religious objections.

So workers who once received copay-free birth control may now have to pay the partial or full out-of-pocket cost. That rule reverses an Obama-era policy that required employers to cover birth control, but made also accommodations for religious organizations.

Full coverage helped many people who needed birth control finally get consistent access to it. A 2010 survey commissioned by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund found that one in three female voters had difficulty affording birth control at some point in their lives.

The campaign's invoices include the estimated annual cost for oral an IUD, implant, shot, patch, ring, as well as oral contraceptives and sterilization. Without copay-free birth control, women stand to spend hundreds of dollars a year to prevent pregnancy -- that may sound small, but it can make a real difference in the lives of low-income women especially. An IUD, which can last for several years, would cost an estimated $1,111.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The invoices also come with some real-talk fine print about the less obvious costs of limited access to affordable contraception: "**Does not include the societal costs of lost wages, limited educational opportunities, lower earning power and impact to family incomes due to unintended pregnancies."

While it's unlikely that the Trump administration will reverse its decision, the invoice generator does give people a clever way to protest the move while reminding the public that copay-free birth control is essential for ensuring women's economic and personal freedom.

You may think of sex education like it appears in pop culture: A classroom of teens looking nervously at a banana and a condom.

Amid the giggling and awkward questions, maybe the students get some insight into how sex works or how to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.

While that's valuable knowledge, comprehensive and LGBTQ-inclusive sex ed actually has the power to positively influence the way young people see themselves and their sexuality. It may also help prevent sexual violence when it teaches students how to value their own bodily autonomy, ask for consent, and identify unhealthy relationship behavior.

That possibility couldn't be more important at a time when the public is searching for answers about how to stop sexual violence.

It's a familiar cycle; one person's predatory behavior becomes national news (think Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes, Donald Trump, and Bill Cosby), the outrage reaches a peak before fading from the headlines, and we end up back in similar territory months or years later.

Nicole Cushman, executive director of the comprehensive sex ed nonprofit organization Answer, says that teaching young people about sex and sexuality can fundamentally shift their views on critical issues like consent, abuse, and assault.

When parents and educators wait to have these conversations until children are young adults or off at college, Cushman says, "we are really doing too little, too late."

Comprehensive sex ed, in contrast, focuses on addressing the physical, mental, emotional, and social dimensions of sexuality starting in kindergarten and lasting through the end of high school. There's no single lesson plan, since educators and nonprofits can develop curricula that meet varying state standards, but the idea is to cover everything including anatomy, healthy relationships, pregnancy and birth, contraceptives, sexual orientation, and media literacy.

"Comprehensive sex ed builds a foundation for these conversations in age-appropriate ways," Cushman says. "That [allows] us not to just equip young people with knowledge and definitions, but the ability to recognize sexual harassment and assault ... and actually create culture change around this issue."

Some parents balk at the idea of starting young, but researchers believe that teaching elementary school students basic anatomical vocabulary as well as the concept of consent may help prevent sexual abuse, or help kids report it when they experience it.

If a child, for example, doesn't know what to call her vagina, she may not know how to describe molestation. And if a boy doesn't understand that he can only touch others with their permission, and be touched by others upon giving his consent, he may mistake sexual abuse as normal.

It doesn't take much to imagine how that early education could impart life-long lessons about the boundaries that separate respectful physical contact from abuse and assault.

Some adults, however, think children learn these lessons without their explicit help. While they do internalize signals and cues from the behavior they witness, that's not always a good thing, says Debra Hauser, president of the nonprofit reproductive and sexual health organization Advocates for Youth.

If a child grew up in a household witnessing an emotionally, verbally, or physically abusive relationship, they may not feel they have a right to give or revoke their consent. They may also believe it's their right to violate someone else. Moreover, young people rarely, if ever, get to watch as the adults around them navigate complicated conversations about things like birth control and sexual preferences.

That's where comprehensive sex ed can be essential, Hauser explains.

"You want young people to learn knowledge, but you also want them to learn skills," she says. "There's a particular art to communicating about boundaries, contraceptive use, likes and dislikes. It's not something you get to see that often because they’re private conversations."

So while parents — and some students — grimace at the idea of role-playing such exchanges in the classroom, that technique is a cornerstone of comprehensive sex education. Staging practical interactions that are inclusive of LGBTQ students can help reduce the stigma that keeps people from expressing their desires, whether that's to stop or start a sexual encounter, use protection, or confront abusive behavior.

But learning and practicing consent isn't a silver bullet for prevention, Cushman says: "Plenty of young people could spout off the definition of consent, but until we really shift our ideas about gender, power, and sexuality, we’re not going to see lasting change."

Research does suggest that a curriculum that draws attention to gender or power in relationships, fosters critical thinking about gender norms, helps students value themselves, and drives personal reflection is much more likely to be effective at preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.

There's also research that indicates that clinging to harmful gender norms is associated with being less likely to use contraceptives and condoms. And women and girls who feel they have less power in a sexual relationship may experience higher rates of sexually transmitted infections and HIV.

While researchers don't yet know whether comprehensive sex ed can reduce sexual violence, Hauser believes it's an important part of prevention.

"Comprehensive sex ed is absolutely essential if we're ever going to be successful in combatting this culture," she says.

But not all students have access to such a curriculum in their schools. While California, for example, requires schools to provide medically accurate and LGBTQ-inclusive sex ed, more than two dozen states don't mandate sex ed at all. Some don't even require medically accurate curricula.

The Trump administration is no fan of comprehensive sex ed, either. It recently axed federal funding for pregnancy prevention programs and appointed an abstinence-only advocate to an important position at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Research shows that abstinence-only education is ineffective. It can also perpetuate traditional gender roles, which often reinforce the idea that girls and women bear the responsibility of preventing sexual assault.

Cushman understands that parents who don't want their children learning about comprehensive sex ed are just worried for their kids, but she says the knowledge they gain isn't "dangerous."

Even if some parents can't shake the worry that it might be, the firestorm over Harvey Weinstein's behavior and the outcry from his victims are proof that we need to better educate young people about sex, consent, and healthy relationships.

It's simply unconscionable to teach girls and women, by design or accident, that sexual violence is their fault.

"We have an obligation to make sure [youth] have the knowledge and skills they need to make the decisions that are best for them," Cushman says. "Sex ed really does have the power to shift our perceptions."

The skincare company Nivea makes dozens of products for women and men around the world.

But what you probably didn't know until earlier this week is that Nivea also sells skin-lightening cream to consumers in Africa.

While it's not the only company to market such products — L'Oréal and Pond's have their own whitening lines — a Nivea ad for a skin-lightening lotion called "Natural Fairness" went viral this week after black London-based entrepreneur William Adoasi shared it on Twitter.

The ad aired in Ghana as a product that "visibly lightens" skin color. It's the latest bit of beauty marketing called out for racist themes or messages. A few weeks ago, Dove published a GIF on Facebook that featured a black woman removing her top over her head to reveal a white woman. The company dropped the ad and apologized. Earlier this year, Nivea was criticized for a Facebook ad geo-targeted to Middle East users with the slogan "white is purity."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The new Nivea ad unleashed both outrage and debate. Some found the ad's message racist; others argued that Nivea is just serving its customers' needs.

But the story of skin-lightening products in Africa goes back to the Victorian era, which coincides with the height of colonialism in Africa, says Yaba Blay, the Dan Blue Endowed Chair in Political Science at North Carolina Central University.

"Colonialism was an ideological war," says Blay, who is from Ghana and has studied the practice of skin bleaching extensively. "How do you come to control people's minds? You control how they see themselves, particularly in relationship to you. White, white, white became the metaphor for all things good."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Indeed, European women began exaggerating and emphasizing their whiteness with makeup and soap as a way of convincing white men that they could produce "purely" white children.

When European traders began exporting soap and other whitening products to colonies, they considered it part of their "civilizing mission." And when Africans rejected those goods as useless, the perceived disrespect sometimes cost them their lives.

"The colonial moment when skin bleaching products become widespread and popular was about, 'We’re civilized and you’re barbaric,'" says Blay. "That market was created."

A spokesperson for Beiersdorf AG, the company that owns Nivea, told Mashable that the product and advertising campaign are part of a business strategy designed to address consumers' "diverse skin care needs":

"We recognize the response and concerns raised around the campaign in Ghana for our NIVEA Natural Fairness Body Lotion and take the feedback seriously. This marketing campaign was never intended to offend any consumers.

As a global company, Beiersdorf offers a wide range of products that are aimed to address the diverse skin care needs of our consumers around the world. We acknowledge every consumer’s right to choose products according to their personal preferences, and we are guided by that to provide them with high-quality skin care product choices."

While debate about the ad has involved blaming women for using lightening products, Blay says she rejects the idea of targeting individual consumers.

"Because of white supremacy and the ways women have internalized many messages, even if you take the products off the market, they’re not going to stop bleaching," she says.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

What angers Blay more is that some of the active agents in lightening products are considered harmful and yet are still sold in places like West Africa. The skin bleaching ingredient hydroquinone, for example, is banned in the European Union because it may act as a cancer-causing agent, but companies can still manufacture products with it, export them to foreign markets, and sell them in communities of color.

Blay also doesn't believe that "haphazardly" telling people to practice self-love and stop using whitening products is an effective strategy.

"We're living in a context where the whole society projects images that don't look like me and calls that beautiful," she says. "We are telling people to love themselves, but how?"

Perhaps in an effort to further distance himself from his former occupation, Mario is ditching those blue-collar overalls for some high society frills. Super Mario Odyssey will let Mario wear Peach's wedding dress.

On the back of the Wedding Peach amiibo box, you can briefly see an image of Mario in Peach's gown, and he looks good as hell. It's at the 6 minute 30 second mark in this unboxing video if you want to see it.

SEE ALSO: 'Odyssey' is the first 'Super Mario' game without a Game Over screen

Or just peep this convenient screenshot:

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

This is a part of an increase in cross-dressing in Nintendo games, what with Link donning women's clothing in Zelda: Breath of the Wild. There is sort of a precedent of Nintendo playing with gender roles, from Samus' famous reveal as a female character in the original Metroid, to Birdo, who has an entire section in Wikipedia devoted to the speculation surrounding her gender.

It'd be unfair to claim Nintendo is championing some sort of progressive ideology, and cross-dressing is a complicated, often misunderstood act and we don't know how Nintendo will actually handle it. Either way, it's cool to see Nintendo earnestly doing these kinds of things with their characters, since they are notoriously protective of their IP.

Seriously, though, Mario looks fucking good in that dress.

California is now the first state in America to recognize a third gender on driver's licenses and birth certificates.

On Sunday, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the legislation that will allow residents to identify their gender as female, male, or nonbinary. Senate Bill 179 — the Gender Recognition Act — states that "the binary gender designations of female and male fail to adequately represent the diversity of human experience."

Nonbinary is defined by GLAAD as a term used by people whose gender identities fall outside traditional categories of male or female.

The legislation will provide Californians with a third gender option, while making it easier for transgender individuals to change their gender identification on existing documents.

According to a press release, the bill gets rid of the previous requirement that an applicant had to submit a physician's letter attesting they had undergone clinical treatment for gender transition. With the new bill, people can simply submit a gender change request application directly to the state registrar.

Starting Sept. 1, 2018, California residents can request legal gender changes without having undergone treatment, and on Jan. 1, 2019 the nonbinary gender option will be available to those applying for driver’s licenses or renewals.

State Senator Toni Atkins, who authored the bill, told The Hill, "The Gender Recognition Act will eliminate unnecessary stress and anxiety for many Californians, and it exemplifies the leadership role that our state continues to take in LGBTQ civil rights."

Though California is the first state to allow a nonbinary gender option on birth certificates, both Oregon and Washington, D.C., have given residents the option to select a third gender option on driver's licenses.

Staring in June 2017 Washington, D.C. state identifications offered an "X" option in addition to female and male to signify their gender was not specified, and Oregon joined them in July 2017.

New York is also currently attempting to pass a similar bill.

If you've paid any attention to social media in the past 24 hours, you've seen #MeToo, the viral hashtag that women have used to acknowledge, even in two simple words, that they've experienced sexual harassment and assault.

The number of people who've shared or discussed a #MeToo post is staggering. That so many women have experienced sexual violence should come as no surprise.

Last year, after Donald Trump's "pussy grabbing" tape became public, the author Kelly Oxford wrote about sexual assault using the hashtag #NotOkay. Harrowing stories of harassment, assault, and rape poured forth.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

A month after that watershed moment -- when it felt like American culture was on the brink of truly confronting its epidemic of sexual violence -- voters elected Trump president. The allegations against him seemed ultimately irrelevant to millions of men and women.

While the catharsis and visibility of #MeToo is vital, what happened after #NotOkay is a disturbing reminder that women can tell their personal stories for the rest of time, but they alone cannot fundamentally transform a culture that condones and excuses behavior like sexual assault. That duty can and should fall to men.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

As #MeToo emphasizes that harassment and rape are pervasive, it's up to men to respond with some sense of urgency. Otherwise, women will have once again struck back at rape culture by telling their stories, only to discover that men aren't willing to take an equivalent risk.

So here are five ways that men can honor #MeToo and become an advocate for meaningful change:

1. Listen to women.

If you've noticed #MeToo ricocheting across your newsfeed, stop and listen to those stories. Some posts might simply consist of two words; others may include details about harassment and assault. If you feel compelled to comment beyond words of support, think twice. People who've made themselves vulnerable by participating in the hashtag don't need you second-guessing their accounts or making contrarian remarks.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

"This isn't new; we just haven't been listening," says Gary Barker, president and CEO of Promundo, a nonprofit organization that engages men and boys in gender equality.

2. Talk to boys and men about #MeToo.

If you can't believe so many women have experienced sexual violence, other boys and men probably don't realize it either. #MeToo is an opportunity for men to talk to each other about how those experiences are universal for women.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

If you share a female friend in common, talk with another man about how you can both show support for her #MeToo post. Fathers can start or continue an ongoing conversation about how their sons can break free from stereotypes that give men permission to dehumanize women. And if you're friends with a man who regularly talks about or treats women as sexual objects instead of human beings, work up the courage to tell him you don't think that's appropriate or right.

When men choose to be silent about friends, coworkers, or acquaintances, says Barker, "we end up being accomplices of this horrendous behavior."

3. Don't act like real life is a porn movie and you're the star.

Some of the stories shared via the #NotOkay and #MeToo hashtags suggest men see interactions with women as if they're taking place on the set of a porn movie. No, women don't want strangers to grab their body parts in a bar. They loathe the sight of a random man masturbating on the subway. They don't want their coaches, teachers, or coworkers to make sexual innuendos. They're repulsed by men whose eyes remain fixated on their neckline during a conversation.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

There is nothing sexy about this behavior. In fact, let there be no confusion: operating from that perspective means you're likely to commit sexual harassment, assault, or rape -- even if you think yourself incapable of those horrors.

4. Learn and practice consent.

Some men, says Barker, have "a sense of learned entitlement that sex is mine for the taking and women’s bodies are objects to be taken by me."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Don't be that guy. Instead, embrace consent as a healthy part of human sexuality. Consent can even be sexy, as this web series proved. Ultimately, consent is about communication and permission, and it can be withdrawn at any time.

5. Advocate for better education and prevention.

"We're so good in the U.S. at lurching from scandal to scandal," says Barker.

That's why it's essential for men to use #MeToo as an opportunity to advocate for longterm education and prevention efforts at schools, campuses, and workplaces.

Barker says research indicates meaningful change happens through multiple education sessions over time, institutional messages about prevention, and comprehensive training for staff and leadership. At schools and campuses, in particular, holding one assembly or bringing in a single speaker just isn't enough to shift attitudes and behavior.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Similarly, it's essential to create an environment in which educators and parents can talk to children about sex, sexuality, and healthy relationships. "The world will teach them horrible things," says Barker. "The really big job here is to counter the messages out there."

Now that another viral hashtag led by women has done so much of that labor, consider it your responsibility to do even just a little more.

If you have experienced sexual assault, you can call the free, confidential National Sexual Assault hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673), or access 24-7 help online by visiting hotline.rainn.org.

On Tuesday night, the unthinkable happened for American soccer: The men's national team lost its chance to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. It'll be the first time the U.S. failed to compete in the tournament since 1986.

The primal screams reverberated on social media and cable television. One of the best tirades came from ESPN analyst and former U.S. player Taylor Twellman, whose embarrassment and disgust were equalled only by his anger at mediocre expectations that have long considered subpar player and team performances superb.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

As people quickly pointed out, the women's team never had this luxury -- and they won three World Cups. They haven't received nearly the same financial investment from U.S. Soccer or comparable media coverage, and they managed to win four Olympic gold medals.

Oh, and until earlier this year, the women's team had been waging a public campaign for equal pay, because despite their winning record they weren't receiving the same paycheck or perks as the men's side. That battle ended in April with a new contract the players described as "equitable."

Critics of equal pay for women have argued that the men play against much more talented competitors and shouldn't be expected to win against, say, Brazil or Spain, so we can't really compare wins and losses -- or pay -- on both squads.

But the men's performance on Tuesday night blew a huge hole in that argument. By losing to Trinidad and Tobago, a scrappy crew and the worst team in this qualifying round, they demonstrated that, in the words of soccer legend and ESPN analyst Julie Foudy, they simply were "not good enough."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

For those who, by default, see men's sports as more professional, exciting, or ambitious, the loss is a wakeup call: masculinity can only take you so far when you lack heart, commitment, and determination. The team appeared to make excuses for a poor showing by complaining about a water-logged field before the match. Some players, like Goalie Tim Howard and defender Omar Gonzalez, lived out their worst nightmares with an own goal that would make any casual sports fan cringe.

So when Twitter users despairingly pointed out that the United States wouldn't be going to the World Cup for the first time in 30 years, others (including me) posted a gleeful asterisk: Actually, that stat applies only to the men.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

While the U.S. women's team hasn't been playing to championship standards in the last year -- getting knocked out of the 2016 Olympics and losing their own SheBelieves Cup in March -- they've begun responding to those failures with resilience. They know that down years, when there's not a World Cup or Olympics, are for overhauling the roster so a team is prepared to compete in the next round of qualifiers.

But they also know the work of convincing skeptics is never done. Though losses may raise questions about the intricacies of strategy and player development for both squads, most female athletes face additional pressure in the subtle or explicit belief that women just can't compete for the same accolades and advertising dollars. A losing streak means having to again fight those stereotypes and expectations.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Maybe that knowledge turned the American female players into relentless underdogs long ago. The men, meanwhile, had comparatively little to prove before Tuesday night. Fans thought they'd squeak through the World Cup qualifiers, make it to Russia, and turn in a decent, if not sometimes dazzling, performance. No one would expect them to reach the final match against an opponent like Brazil or Belgium.

The team's shocking, history-making defeat, however, changed everything. Perhaps now the men's team will finally come to terms with the fact that being just good or decent enough isn't an option any longer. The U.S. women's team has probably lived with this reality since fielding its first squad in the 1980s. Ever since then, they've always found a way to win -- even in the wake of devastating losses.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

You can't teach or buy that kind of heart, but you can sure as hell reward it by becoming a loyal fan. So if you follow the men's team but think watching women's soccer won't be satisfying enough, you've just run out of excuses.

Another week, another incredibly powerful man outed as a serial sexual predator.

That's what I thought last Thursday when The New York Times published an investigative story alleging that Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein had sexually harassed and assaulted women for years.

As I contemplated how to cover the revelations, I felt angry and exhausted. Covering gender for Mashable over the past three years has meant reporting on sexual assault accusations against scores of men: Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, Bill O'Reilly, Josh Duggar, and yes, President Donald Trump.

I've interviewed sexual assault survivors and written about what it's like to be raped and tell someone, only to discover they don't believe you. I've explained why people who've been sexually assaulted don't want to share their stories with reporters and described the psychology of why people often side with the accused when a woman summons the courage to go public. There's been praise for men who confront rape as real and devastating and criticism for those who don't get it right when talking about the subject.

Now as both The New Yorker and The New York Times follow up Thursday's revelations with horrifying details about new allegations, including accounts from Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, and Italian actress and director Asia Argento, exhaustion is turning into fresh rage.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The truth is that no matter how hard any journalist tries to share context about predatory behavior and insight about what it's like to be a survivor, there's an insurmountable and cruel reality: The culture of abuse and misogyny that enables men like Weinstein continues to thrive because people and institutions who could stop the behavior fail women time and again. And they'll keep destroying women's lives (and the lives of male survivors) unless something fundamental changes.

That change isn't as elusive or as impossible as you may think. It's actually quite simple. Once a woman steps forward to report abusive or predatory behavior, believe her. If multiple women share a similar story, see that as corroboration first, not a conspiracy.

Here's another way to think about it: When a victim of crime says she was robbed or physically attacked, our first instinct is to believe her account and ask for evidence later. We often aren't, however, prepared to treat survivors of sexual harassment and assault similarly because that requires acknowledging ordinary or even extraordinary men (brothers, fathers, sons, community leaders) are capable of heinous acts. I can assure you based on my own reporting that they indeed are.

After believing and researching a woman's accusation, the most important thing you can do is act to stop the behavior — and no, that doesn't include payouts and non-disclosure agreements to silence victims. Stern warnings from HR typically don't cut it, either.

When there's enough credible evidence to suggest a man serially harasses, bullies, or assaults women, remove him from power. If you work in law enforcement, build a case against him and charge him with a crime if the behavior violates the law. Nothing short of full accountability will end the epidemic of abuse that poisons so much of the world for women.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Too often workplace leadership makes disturbing calculations about whether they can afford to fire or disciplined the accused. To them, the risks seem legitimate. There's the chance a scandal might become public and reflect poorly on the company. There's the lurking fear that the accusations might be based on misunderstanding or hypersensitivity. And then there's self-interest and ego. The accused might be useful to someone's rise to power or their firm grasp on existing power, and no one likes to admit they hired or empowered a predator.

But if it's not already clear from the financial and cultural fallout over coverups at The Weinstein Company, Fox News, and Uber, there is no calculation in which you can hide or excuse the bad behavior of abusive men in the workplace and still come out a winner.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

If it doesn't ultimately cost you in headlines or lawsuits, it will cost you in less perceptible ways. The whisper networks that women use to warn each other about predators will start focusing on how leadership can't be trusted. Morale and productivity will plummet for some. You'll lose talented employees.

If you're a board member looking the other way, as some say those overseeing The Weinstein Company did but its members deny, you may literally lose your seat at the table when the public learns about your role enabling a monster. (Weinstein admitted that his behavior had "caused a lot of pain," and has since denied that he raped any of his accusers.) And you'll spend a lifetime with the knowledge that as women became victims of harassment and assault, you did nothing or very little to stop it.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

So if you're shocked or surprised by how Weinstein reportedly targeted and victimized women for years, ask yourself what behavior you defend or pretend doesn't exist in your own workplace or social circles. Think about how to support a woman the next time she confides in you about harassment or assault. Reflect on why you might not believe her.

Then do the hard work of chipping away — or tearing down — the culture that routinely makes victims of women and help build another that condemns predatory behavior and abuse.

It's the least you can do.

While some people bizarrely debate whether women belong in science, tech, engineering, and math careers, Getty Images is busy replacing outdated stereotypes with stock images of women in STEM as they actually are: driven, talented, curious, and skilled.

To mark Ada Lovelace Day, an international celebration to honor the achievements of women in STEM, Getty shared with Mashable contemporary and archival photos that demonstrate just how much progress has been made in creating more accurate depictions of women in these fields.

The company's internal statistics tell part of that story. Search terms related to professional women continue to rise year after year. Between 2016 and 2017, searches for "female CEO" rose 47 percent and "woman business meeting" by 192 percent.

Credit: Getty Images

Credit: Getty Images

Search terms specific to STEM careers also increased during that same time period. The search for "business woman technology" skyrocketed by 1,300 percent, while "female programmer," "woman astronaut," and "women in technology" all rose by more than 100 percent.

"People are looking for imagery to support what’s going on in the world," says Claudia Marks, senior art director at Getty Images.

The company has actively helped create new images to reflect that reality through its Lean In collection, which is a partnership with the nonprofit women's empowerment organization LeanIn.org. The below images are part of that collection. Four images of girls and women engaged in STEM activities are among the 15 most downloaded images from that library this year.

Getty counts major ad agencies and media companies (including Mashable) among its clients, so customer searches can be driven both by news events and cultural trends.

A movie like Hidden Figures can spark more interest in diverse depictions of female engineers and mathematicians. News about a female astronaut breaking the U.S. record for cumulative time spent in space can trigger more searches for -- you guessed it -- female astronauts.

Evidence of such changes are also clear when comparing archival images of women to women in present-day photographs. Many of the below archival images were taken in the 1950s and tend to depict women as demure or absent from the workplace. There are notable exceptions, including a woman operating an IBM mainframe computer in 1961 and two women working on an aircraft during World War II.

UNITED STATES - CIRCA 1950s: Young girl having tea party. (Photo by George Marks/Retrofile/Getty Images) Credit: Getty Images

Girl goggles assembling electronics circuit at science center Credit: Getty Images/Hero Images

Indeed, Ada Lovelace, a 19th century mathematician, is considered to have written the instructions for the first computer program, but her legacy and accomplishments were overshadowed by those of men.

Marks says that even though women held important STEM jobs decades ago, depictions of that work often showed them as ancillary to men's roles or being supervised by men. Those images also didn't represent people of diverse backgrounds.

Credit: Hulton Archive / Getty Images

Credit: Getty Images

Now, she says, customers are looking for a much different theme.

"They’re searching for women, people who look authentic ... They're looking for all races, shapes, ages," she says. They want to see women "striking out on your own, being independent and being in charge."

A woman at a design model of the operator's console of the new IBM 7044 mainframe computer, in 1961. Credit: Archive Photos/Getty Images

Getty Credit: Getty Images

So instead of showing women smiling as they answer the phone or bake a cake, they feature women looking at the camera with confidence while seated in an office chair or wearing a lab coat. Girls that may have once played with a tea set are now assembling electronics.

Marks says that Getty educates its contributors about how to portray different scenarios, emphasizing an "intersectional representation of women" so that diversity is a key part of photos meant for the masses.

Credit: Getty Images

Credit: Getty Images

"By encouraging this imagery to be created, and encouraging our clients to use these images, we help influence how the world sees women in business, in STEM, in technology," says Marks. "[A]nd women can reinforce how they see themselves."

Women working on WW II aircraft assembly. Credit: Retrofile/Getty Images

Female engineer working at 3D printer. Credit: Getty Images/Hero Images

It may be long overdue, but at least that moment has finally arrived.

Amber Rose doesn't care what haters think about her.

A few years ago, she cried over their sexist insults, tried to defend herself online, or avoided leaving the house. Then something magical happened to the activist and talk show host.

"I got to a point where I really stopped giving a fuck, and that’s when I truly got enlightened," she says.

That revelation came after years spent in the public eye as a frequent target of vicious racist and sexist attacks. Her previous relationships with Wiz Khalifa and Kanye West had become fodder in what seemed like a never-ending cycle of abuse.

Then she took a different approach and responded to the harassment, victim-blaming, and double standards with a no-apologies attitude about her sexuality.

In September 2015, she starred in a Funny or Die video called "Walk of No Shame." It begins with her leaving a man's house early in the morning, wearing a sexy dress, and carrying her high heels. She smiles confidently as passers-by congratulate her for having sex and celebrating her body. It feels like an alternate universe, but Rose is doing everything she can to make that scenario a reality.

A few weeks after the Funny or Die video went up, she launched the inaugural Amber Rose SlutWalk in Los Angeles. The festival drew inspiration from a SlutWalk protest event founded in 2011 after a Canadian police officer reportedly said women should stop "dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized."

Women responded by walking through the streets wearing exactly what they wanted as an effort to reclaim the word slut and put an end to rape culture. Rose's third-annual SlutWalk will happen this Sunday in Los Angeles' Pershing Square.

Rose knows that some people think the word slut can't be reclaimed. She gets that some women are embarrassed to be associated with it under any circumstance. That won't make her change the name of her event, though.

Rebranding it now just to appeal to a broader audience would be disingenuous, she says.

"Like I'm going to start with the SlutWalk and then three years later say I’m gonna change it so I can get more people to come?" Rose says. "Eventually you’re gonna come."

View this post on Instagram

When she attended the Women's March in Los Angeles earlier this year, she saw celebrities who declined her personal invitation to attend past SlutWalks. She saw signs reclaiming the word "pussy" that looked similar to the ones at her event. She knows there's a larger audience for her message, even if some women and men are hesitant to publicly embrace it.

Last year's event ultimately hosted 11,000 people, and ticket sales for this year's SlutWalk are nearing 20,000.

"People are getting more aware," she says. "I kind of just shouted from the rooftops. No radio personalities wanted to talk about it. No celebrities wanted to come. I did this shit myself."

This year's event also includes a new daylong conference called OPENed on Saturday, which is packed with high-profile speakers who will give workshops about activism, sexual health and relationships, entrepreneurship and financial literacy, menstrual policy, and legal rights.

Rose at her inaugural SlutWalk in Los Angeles, in 2015. Credit: Broadimage/REX/Shutterstock

Rose wants the conference participants to walk away with more confidence than they had before.

"Society has taught women so many things in their life — what they should wear, how they should be with a man," she says. "OPENed conference is teaching you to do whatever you want to do. There’s options."

Rose is also savvy when it comes to educating people about those choices and drawing attention to her causes. In June, she used Instagram and Twitter to post a glam portrait of herself — complete with pubic hair. She hashtagged it #bringbackthebush and linked to the upcoming SlutWalk.

Her pubic hair advocacy is genuine. She says it started one day when she was thinking about the hassle and pain of removing pubic hair.

"Why do I do it? Why have I done it for so many years?" she says. "Because if I don't, guys will think I was gross. This is bullshit. There has to be a reason why we have hair down there."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

So she looked it up and discovered that pubic hair grooming can lead to lacerations, inflammation, and infection. Then she decided on a message delivered via a sexy photo. It went viral and Rose couldn't have been more thrilled. (Instagram deleted the image for violating community guidelines, which drew even more attention to the post.)

"I got everything I wanted," she says. "My website went crazy. People talked shit, which I love, because I’m comfortable with myself."

This anecdote might best sum up what you can learn from the Amber Rose School of Life: There's nothing better than feeling confident when staring down your critics.

Hugh Hefner made a fortune selling sexual freedom for the 20th century in Playboy magazine. Now with his passing at age 91, everyone is trying to make sense of the man's legacy.

He defied repressive social and sexual attitudes in the 1950s by insisting that men could make martinis, talk about jazz, and want women. And women in the pages of Playboy could have sophisticated interests and pursuits, including sexual expression.

That was revolutionary for 1950s America, but it's practically quaint compared to the empire that Hefner eventually built. That kingdom shouldn't be known for its obsession with flesh but for the contradictions in the way it handled race, sex, and gender.

Hefner championed civil rights causes and published content from black authors and activists like James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X. Playboy featured black women as centerfolds in the '60s and '70s, and was one of the first magazines to put a black woman on its cover. It acknowledged black women as beautiful in ways that society refused to, and yet the enduring image of Hefner remains the shot of him, at various ages, surrounded by young, beautiful, mostly white women. That photo, and its symbolism, is seared into the minds of countless men as the pinnacle of manhood.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Playboy and Hefner also mean different things to different women. For some, the Playboy life empowered women who wanted a seat at the king's table -- even if it sometimes meant first serving the meal while dressed in bunny ears and a fluffy tail. Kim Kardashian West, Jenny McCarthy, and Carmen Electra, all of whom posed for the cover of Playboy, shared fond memories of Hefner on social media after learning of his death. But for other women, the magazine and brand symbolized a new kind of repression: lust for the female body disguised as liberation.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

It's worth remembering that Hugh Hefner launched Playboy in 1953 by paying $500 for a nude photograph of Marilyn Monroe, which he used inside the magazine's inaugural issue.

The struggling actress posed for a photographer years before her movie career took off, according to the Washington Post. Hefner purchased the photo from a calendar company but reportedly never thanked Monroe, nor did he send her any proceeds from the issue's sales. Hefner did, however, buy a crypt next to hers in a Los Angeles cemetery and will spend eternity literally at her side. So Hefner's legacy might be best summed up as that of a man who seized financial and personal opportunities to glorify women in complicated, if not sometimes perverse, ways.

You could also consider Hefner a product of American culture and its marketplace demands, says Shelly Eversley, a feminist scholar and founder of the website Equality Archive. Hefner made a business opportunity out of both the male gaze and rebelling against prudish norms.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

"[D]id he really put this in men’s minds or did he just give them what he wanted?" asks Eversley.

Indeed, capitalizing on men's interest in women's bodies wasn't Hefner's invention. He just excelled at marketing a product that made some men feel worldly and virile and some women feel sophisticated and proudly sexual.

View this post on Instagram

Those ideas shouldn't necessarily inspire a knee-jerk reaction, but how they played out in the real world is something that definitely can. As Gloria Steinem famously wrote in her 1963 exposé about working undercover as a Playboy Bunny in Hefner's New York City club, being manhandled and groped was routine business. The staff, Steinem wrote, were also paid poorly and subjected to STD testing as well as invasive medical exams.

Hefner's legacy may be proof of how quickly sexual liberation can become a predatory pursuit when only men get to define the expectations and standards. His own personal life, and his habit of living with a gaggle of women who serviced his ego and sexual needs, would've looked more like the Handmaid's Tale had he not advertised it as glamorous for everyone involved. At least one account from Hefner's former girlfriend, Holly Madison, suggests he wasn't all that interested in whether or not those women had any real measure of freedom or independence.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Still, Hefner considered himself a champion of gender equality, despite the fact that Playboy elevated sexist commentary from its inception and attacked "superfeminists" in the '70s. The magazine, however, also published articles arguing in favor of abortion rights, and Hefner's foundation supported the Equal Rights Amendment.

Contrasting examples like these demonstrate just how much of Hefner's legacy is a paradox. What you make of it depends on your values, beliefs, and experiences. In Hefner's case, the contradictions reveal the fault lines of American society -- sexuality, race, and gender -- and how easy it is to say you believe one thing but do another. In your efforts to dismantle one type of oppression, you might be successful for yourself but not others. You may also end up creating a new, sexier version of that oppression.

Whatever happens, it won't be simple or straightforward. Consider that the ultimate lesson of Hugh Hefner's legacy.

Today's surreal revelation surrounding the Trump family is that Jared Kushner — you know, the husband of Ivanka who used his private email account to conduct White House business — is apparently registered to vote in New York as a woman.

First reported by Wired, Mashable obtained public records that confirm Jared Corey Kushner's gender is listed as female on his New York voter registration.

It's very likely a minor clerical error, and it would be funny if the Trump administration wasn't also spending public money on investigating non-existent voter fraud. And also if there weren't documented cases of other people not being able to vote because of minor clerical errors.

The documents also show that his registration was last used to vote on Nov. 25, 2016 — the most recent presidential election if memory serves us.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Perhaps Kushner didn't understand the simple question he was being asked when filling out his registration form back in 2009? But based on Kushner and squad's track records, the filing was likely an accidental clerical error.

Back in July Kushner incorrectly filled out security clearance forms not once, not twice, but an impressive three times. The reasoning behind the initial mishap, in which Kushner failed to disclose his foreign contacts? Well according to The Washington Post's Jamie Gorelick, one of Kushner's attorneys said "the document had been prematurely submitted."

It's also more than a little ironic, considering this makes him the second Trump family member to perhaps be committing voter fraud, a cause that we know is near and dear to Trump Sr.'s heart.

UPDATE Sept. 29, 10:39 a.m. PT: Turns out Kushner did check the box for male and a database error listed him as female.

The New York Daily News found Kushner's original registration form that shows he checked the "M" box. The New York board of election's database has a note that says, "corrected gender" with Wednesday's date -- that's when the mix-up was first reported.

Mystery solved.

Betsy DeVos, one of the most controversial Trump administration cabinet members, just made a radical change to one of the most contentiously debated Department of Education policies.

On Friday, DeVos announced that the department had revoked Obama-era guidelines that advocates argue were critical to protecting victims of college sexual assault and investigating allegations of violence.

"Schools must continue to confront these horrific crimes and behaviors head-on," DeVos said in a statement. "There will be no more sweeping them under the rug. But the process also must be fair and impartial, giving everyone more confidence in its outcomes."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

While DeVos framed the issue as a matter of fairness, advocates were alarmed by her focus on accused perpetrators.

The previous guidance, issued in 2011 and 2014, instructed schools to use what's known as a "preponderance of the evidence" standard instead of a "clear and convincing" standard. The former means that it's more likely than not that sexual harassment or violence occurred while the latter requires campus investigators to determine the accusations are highly probable or reasonably certain.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Campus sex assault allegations are investigated by school officials as a violation of federal sex discrimination law -- not criminal statutes. The Obama administration argued the preponderance of the evidence standard reflected Supreme Court practices when evaluating civil litigation of sex discrimination cases. The interim guidance now allows schools to use either standard of evidence.

DeVos, who was previously a business executive and Republican political operative, vehemently disagreed with that approach. "Washington dictated that schools must use the lowest standard of proof … it’s no wonder so many call these proceedings 'kangaroo courts,'" she said earlier this month. "Kangaroo courts" has become a conservative talking point used to describe campus investigations of sexual assault.

Advocates of the Obama-era guidance denounced DeVos' decision as irresponsible.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

"With sexual assaults routinely going unreported, uninvestigated and unpunished, the scales are already heavily tipped in the favor of rapists," Nita Chaudhary, co-founder of the women's advocacy group UltraViolet, said in a statement. "The idea that we need to focus more on the rights of the accused was almost laughable before this decision, now it’s just terrifying and dangerous."

Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, said in her own statement that the new guidance will have a "devastating impact" on students and school because it'll discourage students from reporting assaults and create uncertainty for schools.

"This misguided directive is a huge step back to a time when sexual assault was a secret that was swept under the rug," she said.

Other advocacy organizations opposed to the decision include the American Association of University Women, Human Rights Campaign, and Planned Parenthood. Vice President Joe Biden spoke out against the expected policy changes earlier this week in a PSA for the It's On Us campaign.

"We cannot let that stand. So don't give up," he said. "Speak out. Demand that your school continue to make progress."

The Department of Education will solicit comment from the public as it develops its new official policy on how colleges should handle campus sexual assault.

Based on the preliminary response from advocates, the department may want to prepare for an avalanche of angry feedback.

There are countless ways to explain the concept of sexual consent.

A new trio of videos released in partnership with the It's On Us campaign uses a less obvious strategy: humor.

In each of the videos, a woman has an urge she can't control, so she indulges herself in the most comical way possible. In just a minute, the absurdity of each scene demonstrates how so-called logical justifications for sexual assault make zero sense.

First, a woman sees a wedding cake that's impossible to resist. She shoves a fistful of the dessert into her mouth as the baker watches in horror. Next, two women see a sculpture in a museum they absolutely must touch. The guard implores them to stop, but they just laugh in his face.

Finally, a woman walks into a hardware store dying to pee and rushes to use a floor model toilet. "You need to leave right now or I'm gonna call the cops," says the store clerk.

The woman becomes outraged. "Dude, what's your problem," she shouts. "I come in here with a biological urge that I can't be expected to control. You've got everything just out on display, super proud to show off what you got, and then you're shocked when I come in here and let nature run its course? Really?"

When she puts it that way, the most common defense of sexual assault looks not just idiotic but grotesque.

The videos were created by the advertising collective 101-North Marketing and are being distributed by It's On Us, the campus sexual assault prevention campaign launched by President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in 2014. "Sexual assault is a delicate subject, and while we didn't want to make light of the issue, we also thought that if we could find the right angle, addressing it with comedy could be really effective," said 101-North Marketing writer/director Johanna Stein and creative director David Gassman in an email.

Elvin Bruno, the campus programs director for It's On Us, says the campaign is always looking for new ways to communicate its message. Indeed, these humorous videos make consent look like common sense without raising the darker themes that often define sexual assault prevention PSAs.

The timing is important, says Bruno, because the Department of Education, led by Trump appointee Betsy DeVos, is reviewing Obama-era protections for campus sexual assault victims.

DeVos has criticized the system for how schools establish the guilt of alleged rapists and said that approach may lead to litigation and appeals that re-traumatize survivors. Advocates believe the current guidelines hold schools accountable for investigating accusations of assault and punishing guilty students.

Bruno says the best way for students' to protest any changes to the current system is to comment on the process. It's On Us will send people an alert when the comment period opens if they signup for the campaign's pledge.

"We're issuing a rallying cry for everyone to become part of the solution ... and create an environment where survivors are supported," says Bruno.

If that happens to be triggered by watching an unexpectedly funny video about consent, then all the better.

There are plenty of ways to recognize the pioneering women who've made unique contributions to science, technology, engineering, and math.

But GE chose an unorthodox strategy by creating custom-designed animations of 12 influential women in STEM and projecting them onto the ceiling of Grand Central Terminal in New York City.

That famous tourist attraction and commuter hub is known for its high ceiling, which features a stunning constellations. So naturally GE chose 12 female scientists and engineers and illustrated their faces amongst the stars. Tourists and commuters can see the 7-minute "Unseen Stars" projections at different times starting Tuesday until Thursday at 11:59 p.m.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The stunt is part of GE's Balance the Equation initiative. The campaign aims to have 20,000 women available to fill STEM jobs at GE by 2020, while also reaching 50-50 representation in the company's technical entry-level programs.

"In addition to internal hiring and retention goals, GE also wants to publicly celebrate influential female scientists and engineers so more young women consider careers in the field," the company said in a statement.

The roster of 12 women includes Millie Dresselhaus, the first woman to receive the National Medal of Science in Engineering; Laurie Leshin, a geochemist in search of life on Mars; and Hadiyah-Nicole Green, a physicist who developed technology to use laser-activated nanoparticles in treating cancer.

And if that's not cool enough for you, consider this: geofilters and Facebook frames will make it possible for people passing through Grand Central to capture a selfie with the projections until the campaign ends on Thursday.

Think of it as just one more way to take those "unseen stars" and share them with the world.

The Movember Foundation, an international men's health charity, knows how to find novel ways to talk about uncomfortable subjects like prostate cancer and suicide prevention. Famous for their annual mustache growing campaign, the nonprofit uses meme-ready initiatives to raise awareness about taboo subjects.

Now the foundation's latest effort makes clever use of traditional internet gold: the how-to video.

The three new YouTube clips, published in advance of World Suicide Prevention Day on Sept. 10, contain a hidden message about men and mental health. If you're just watching the text scroll on-screen, but not listening to the sound, what you'll see are men explaining how to make a fishing rod, fill a gas barbecue tank, and change a flat bicycle tire.

Everything changes, however, if you un-mute the sound.

In one video entitled "You don’t have to be a fisherman to master this simple survival skill," a man improvises a fishing rod out of a soda can as the text on-screen reads: "This is great for doing at home. Make sure it's empty, then pierce the can."

But his voice tells a different story. Looking at the camera, he says aloud, "Things aren't great at home. It's made me feel kind of empty." He knows it might be "awkward" but he wants to turn things around and asks for your help.

The other videos follow the same pattern. The man fixing a flat bike tire says, "At first, I felt like I was kind of in a hole -- couldn't be around people. And that's when I realized something's not quite right." He asks whether it's a good idea to call a mental health support hotline. The text, meanwhile, is all about how to repair a flat on-the-go and betrays nothing about his pain.

The clips spoke to Kevin Hines in a powerful way.

"They’re working on these little projects and [the videos] have this double meaning," says Hines, a suicide attempt survivor and Movember Foundation ambassador. "That part resonated with me because I’ve engaged in activities in my life where I’m doing something considered masculine and all I wanted to do is just break down and cry."

The videos are part of "Unmute – Ask him," a monthlong campaign to encourage conversations about men's mental health. The foundation's website includes pointers for how to have tough discussions like these.

"We can all play a part in reducing the rate of male suicide by sparking a potentially life-changing conversation – the simple first step is just to ask and listen," Craig Martin, global director of Mental Health & Suicide Prevention at the Movember Foundation, said in a statement.

While women in the U.S. are more likely to attempt suicide, men are far more likely to die by suicide. In 2015, white men accounted for seven out of 10 suicide deaths in the U.S. Globally, a man dies by suicide every minute, according to the Movember Foundation.

Hines says that friends and loved ones can help support a man by asking open-ended questions about how they're doing and what they're feeling. He recommends a non-judgmental approach, particularly if you don't get a candid answer the first or second times but still suspect something is wrong.

Men, he says, can actively search for the people in their lives they trust with intimate feelings and who can "create a safe space" to talk about emotions.

"My hope for these videos is that when men are suicidal and bottling it up inside and getting more sick, those who see these videos get a spark lit underneath them and rise up to say, 'I get to talk about this. I’ve earned talking about this. I deserve to be here.'"

If you want to talk to someone or are experiencing suicidal thoughts, text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Here is a list of international resources.

When John Legend was in high school, he loved playing music and performing with his friends. Yet he sensed these passions didn't make him a man in the traditional sense of the word.

"Obviously in high school, sports culture is so dominant, and the most popular kids are usually the athletes, particularly for men," says Legend. "So it’s hard to feel as confident about yourself if you’re not at the top of that food chain, if you’re not the biggest, the fastest, the strongest."

In order to conquer that social hierarchy, some young men might be tempted to embrace toxic masculinity—a version of manhood that has no tolerance for vulnerability. But Legend has another idea: "encourage young men to love themselves and love who they are."

That's why the Grammy- and Oscar-winning songwriter teamed up with Axe to launch a program that helps high school boys develop a more inclusive and expressive definition of masculinity.

"Senior Orientation" will initially connect Legend and the poet Carlos Andrés Gómez with several high school seniors in Columbus, Ohio. Legend and Gómez will mentor the students and help them develop artistic performances. The program will culminate in a school event this fall where Legend, Gómez, and their mentored students will perform.

"It’s encouraging creativity, encouraging individuality, rejecting things like bullying and behaviors that belittle other people," Legend says, describing his vision for inclusive masculinity.

The program uses a curriculum developed by Gómez, a former teacher and social worker, to help teen boys identify the messages they hear about masculinity and guide them in developing their own unique definition.

Axe, the men's grooming brand once known for its wildly macho ads, has been preaching the virtues of inclusive masculinity since launching its "Find Your Magic" campaign, with Legend's support, last year. In May, the brand unveiled an ad reassuring its customers that they weren't alone in secretly questioning masculine stereotypes.

When Legend thinks of toxic masculinity, he thinks of boys and men who bully and belittle others because of their own fears or insecurities. While that phenomenon is timeless, it feels particularly relevant these days as President Trump uses the presidential pulpit to scold and intimidate his enemies, and neo-Nazis and white supremacists arm themselves with weapons at public gatherings to defend Confederate monuments.

"I think [fear] is the case with a lot of toxic masculinity," he says. "It’s fear of powerlessness, fear of being replaced or displaced or not being dominant and then lashing out in a way that is violent ... And I think there’s some sense of grievance that you see particularly with those who are marching in Charlottesville where they feel like something’s been taken from them and they’re trying in the most heinous ways and the most toxic ways to reclaim some position in society."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

It's a long way from trying to dismantle toxic masculinity in one Ohio high school to changing an entire culture, but "Senior Orientation" is a pilot effort that Axe hopes to eventually replicate at schools across the country (though Legend won't personally show up at every campus where it's adopted).

Gómez says that instead of shaming boys for behavior that could be characterized as toxic masculinity, the goal is to help them embrace and express traits or qualities they feel are stifled because of traditional stereotypes. That could mean crying in public, painting with watercolors, or wearing a pastel-colored shirt. Gómez, a self-described "emo poet," knows that some boys and men are skeptical of challenging masculine norms because they think it means constantly expressing their emotions.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

"That’s the cool thing," Gómez jokes, "You don’t have to be me."

But Gómez says his response often raises a terrifying question for some skeptics who then wonder, "Well, who am I supposed to be?"

That is something that only a boy or man can answer for himself, but Gómez says the point of dismantling toxic masculinity in your own life is freeing yourself from the "suffocating" idea that you can only be one kind of man.

"I think so many young people are figuring out who they want to be," says Legend.

"The more we encourage young men to love themselves and love who they are and be confident in themselves, they won’t need to bully anybody and they won’t need to belittle other people to feel good about themselves."

The Girl Scouts of the USA has been turning out smart future leaders of America for the past century. Those girls and young women have collected countless badges for activities related to art, science, the outdoors, leadership and more. But, surprisingly, the 105-year-old organization has never offered a "space science" badge — not even in the late 1960s when America first went to the moon.

Space nerds can now rejoice because the Girl Scouts, in partnership with NASA and the SETI Institute, plans to introduce six new space science badges for participants of every age between kindergarten and 12th grade.

The badges, which are currently being developed and tested with focus groups across the country, will be available in 2019 and focus on the themes of NASA's space sciences: astrophysics, planetary science, and heliophysics (a fancy word for studying the sun and its effects on space).

Girl Scouts can currently explore astronomy as part of their badge "journey" and local council's programming. Next week, those opportunities will include events and educational experiences related to the total solar eclipse. The new badges, however, will go deep into space science.

As Edna DeVore, director of education and SETI Institute Fellow, put it in an email, the badges will cover "[e]verything beyond the Earth."

Sylvia Acevedo, CEO of the Girl Scouts, sees the badges as a way for girls to develop or enhance their interest in science, technology, engineering, and math. She's also the perfect spokesperson for the new program: Acevedo is a rocket scientist who once worked for NASA's famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

As a Girl Scout who grew up near Las Cruces, New Mexico, Acevedo earned her science badge by building a functioning model rocket and launching it into the sky.

View this post on Instagram

"It gave me a lifelong fascination with breaking gravity's grip," she says.

Acevedo wants other Girl Scouts to have a similar transformational experience that introduces them not only to the wonders of the night sky, but scientific concepts like magnetic fields, solar wind, and radiation. Ideally, such experiences will help build girls' confidence, teach them how to take risks and experiment, problem-solve challenges, and ask for help and advice from an adult.

In order to earn the badges, girls will participate in outdoor activities that require developing their own ideas about the natural world and then observing and testing those concepts. They'll connect both with the community of amateur astronomers through the Night Sky Network and with women at NASA to explore STEM careers. (Fun fact: Many female NASA astronauts were once Girl Scouts.)

Like Acevedo, DeVore has her own childhood experience falling in love with space. Raised on a cattle ranch in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, she spent nights looking at the Milky Way in the "amazingly dark" sky.

"I hope that sharing the love of the night sky through these badges with young girls everywhere —rural, suburban, and urban girls — will open them up to always looking up and sharing our place in the universe, whether through STEM careers or simply as someone who appreciates the natural world," DeVore, a lifetime member of the Girl Scouts, said.

The five-year program is funded by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and has additional partners in the Girl Scouts of Northern California, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the University of Arizona, and ARIES Scientific.

"It’s just so exciting and thrilling to understand the cosmos and what’s happening with space and the stars," says Acevedo. "I think we’re unleashing a lot of girls to have the confidence, skills, know-how, and drive to help solve some of our biggest challenges."

When Pantsuit Nation became a viral phenomenon days before the election last November, the private Facebook group was focused on electing the first female president.

What it got instead was something uniquely American: a devastating reminder that this country's long, unresolved history of white supremacy continues to haunt us.

Many of Pantsuit Nation's 3.9 million members are white and consider themselves champions of racial equality. Some of them insisted as much when, following the election, conversations about race within the group explored the racism and bigotry deep within the left. Those exchanges often spiraled out of control, with some white women insinuating that black women were being divisive.

If Pantsuit Nation was founded on a whim to celebrate female empowerment, its duty became something more essential: convincing moderate and progressive white people to not only stand in principle with the most vulnerable Americans, but to actively support them while exorcising bigotry from their own hearts and minds.

It's this same tension that courses through major pop culture and political debates about diversity and representation. Whether people are talking about Confederate, the coming HBO show that imagines an America in which white Southerners won the Civil War, or arguing about the portrayal of race in books written for young adults, the conflict often revolves around just how many white liberals and progressives are eager to defend and preserve a dangerous status quo that doesn't strike them as outwardly racist or discriminatory.

Pantsuit Nation's critics say it failed to seize a momentous opportunity to organize millions of people while helping white people get "woke." Its founder believes that, nearly 10 months after its accidental rise to cultural and social media power, Pantsuit Nation is just beginning to fully wield its influence.

View this post on Instagram

Pantsuit Nation (which is technically a Facebook Page, 501(c)(4) nonprofit, and the 501(c)(3) Pantsuit Nation Foundation) remains dedicated to publishing personal stories as a means of social change. The Facebook group has recently been a supportive refuge for, among many others, a mother of a child with special healthcare needs, a transgender Marine, a young woman who works in Congress, and a son proud of his newly naturalized mother.

The most popular Pantsuit Nation posts get a million views, and the goal is to transform that broad reach into social justice education and political action and participation.

In the past few months, it hired an executive director and a chief operating officer to manage the group's ambitious plans. Last month it launched a weekly podcast featuring interviews with average citizens and political pros alike about how to do things like run for local office. Every episode includes a "call to action." The first, in July, urged listeners to pressure their representatives to defend the Affordable Care Act. This week, listeners got information about how to participate in a day of action to protect the provisional legal status of immigrants who arrived to the U.S. as children without documentation.

View this post on Instagram

Pantsuit Nation has also partnered with Calls for Change, an advocacy group that uses weekly email and text alerts to tell subscribers when and how to contact their elected officials about legislation related to issues like paid family leave, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, and immigration. The partnership, which will be announced next week to group members on Facebook, is designed to pair stories with a practical tool for participating in democracy.

"If we're incrementally changing the way that people understand the world around them, that's something I'm proud of," says Libby Chamberlain, the 34-year-old mom of two who first created Pantsuit Nation as a private Facebook Page for a few dozen Hillary Clinton supporters last October.

With zero experience as a campaign staffer, political organizer, or longtime activist, Chamberlain improvised Pantsuit Nation's backup plan in the wake of Trump's victory. She cobbled together a crew of 170 volunteer moderators from around the world, few of whom had any formal training in facilitating conversations about bias and discrimination. (That number has since been reduced to roughly 30 people who have all participated in a "diversity and inclusion" training.)

Two months after Pantsuit Nation came to life, Chamberlain announced her intention to edit a book of selected posts and turn the group into a nonprofit organization. Proceeds from the book would be shared with contributors and help fund the nonprofit.

Those crucial details, however, weren't clearly communicated in the book announcement. (Chamberlain worked an average of 60 unpaid hours a week until May when Pantsuit Nation received a grant for progressive startups. Her salary has not drawn from book proceeds.)

By the end of December, columns in HuffPost and the Los Angeles Times declared Pantsuit Nation a "sham" and a "feel-good commodity." In June, The Ringer ran a review of the book under the headline "Pantsuit Nation's Tattered Ambition."

Leslie Caughell, an assistant professor of political science at Virginia Wesleyan University, says watching the evolution of Pantsuit Nation is like watching the evolution of any other major mainstream feminist group.

"How do you make the group a potent political force? And what would they be pushing for?" asks Caughell. "The second question is, are women of color incorporated? Or is this just a white middle-class thing where women can absolve themselves of responsibility?"

Cortney Tunis, the nonprofit's new executive director, knows the criticism well.

"There's an interesting dynamic to having started the group and then building infrastructure underneath it," she says. "We’re never shocked by what anybody writes about us because we’re not perfect."

View this post on Instagram

And yet, she adds, the women behind Pantsuit Nation can't afford to be driven by the fear of failure, because the group's struggles get to the heart of what building an "equitable democracy" means in the 21st century. That idea is meaningless if it's premised on the guise of liberal inclusiveness as bigotry thrives beneath the surface.

Chamberlain acknowledges Pantsuit Nation must take on frank conversations about oppression within its ranks. In January, it posted a 15-page resource document with links to information about white privilege, colorblindness, and microaggressions. A more comprehensive version, almost twice as long, debuted in July.

Critics, however, argue the group's focus on emotional storytelling is ineffective in the absence of explicit appeals for political action or self-reflection.

Leslie Mac, an activist and cofounder of Safety Pin Box, a monthly subscription service for "white people striving to better allies in the fight for Black Liberation," said that storytelling on Pantsuit Nation often revolved around fighting an enemy, like Trump or a Republican politician, who was clearly a bad person doing something unjust or wrong.

She believes that framing often prevented members from confronting their own culpability in harming marginalized communities and people of color. Instead, they seemed satisfied by simply responding to posts with a thumbs up, heart, or generic comment.

"Just hearing stories or sharing stories will not lead to anything tangible being done," says Mac, who spoke about her negative experience with Pantsuit Nation on a Facebook Live in December and hasn't returned to the group since. She remains skeptical of the group's recent efforts to connect the personal and political, arguing that they don't go far enough to mobilize and educate its members.

Chamberlain, who says she respects Mac's work and perspective, feels that every story posted in the group contains an inherent call to action, whether that's to learn more about ICE raids, anti-black discrimination, or how to help a local nonprofit.

She doesn't want to "hijack" the post with a prescriptive message about how people should think or feel after reading it, or create a rule that posts will only be approved if admins can add their own directions about how to be a better ally. Instead, Chamberlain, the moderators, and admins try to offer similar resources and directions in the comments, though those are seen by fewer people than the posts themselves.

And then there's Facebook's algorithm, which gives the audience considerable control over what content surfaces most frequently. Chamberlain essentially faces the same pressure as media publishers on Facebook: Continue posting content your audience loves or risk losing your presence in their News Feed.

Last November, Chamberlain and other admins created what they called "story + action" posts that combined personal testimony with a prompt to do something concrete, like calling a legislator about saving the Affordable Care Act or donating to a Flint, Michigan, nonprofit helping those affected by the local water crisis. Chamberlain says many of these posts were less popular than the personal stories submitted by group members. The admins have stopped running calls to action in that format, instead opting for shorter, targeted appeals that spell out exactly what members can do.

"In some ways it is an ongoing process of recognizing the power of personal narrative to motivate people," she says. "We always see that people’s stories are the most powerful message in the group."

Still, there's evidence that Chamberlain, her staff, and volunteers are willing to take more risks.

When Lecia Michelle (not her legal name) recently submitted a post to Pantsuit Nation she didn't think the group's administrators would approve it.

The post wasn't like anything else the group is known for publishing. Instead of an emotional first-person account, it linked to a Medium article about how white parents can talk to their children about race.

Until a few months ago, Pantsuit Nation rarely allowed external links. Chamberlain says that approach began to shift in May when admins began sharing linked posts if the member had a personal connection to the content or if it introduced a conversation that wasn't happening organically in the group or elsewhere.

"The [admin] was like, 'We want that.' I was so surprised ... I was shocked," says Lecia, who is a black woman. The post, which appeared in July, received 160 comments, several of them with their own lengthy threads, and 4,500 reactions.

Chamberlain asked moderators to keep an eye out for comments that dismissed Lecia's concerns or adopted a "colorblind mentality." Indeed, some threads were as uncomfortable as you'd imagine. Some commenters, who presented or self-identified as white, seemed self-congratulatory when talking about their views on racism. Others had difficulty understanding how their children could actively work to be anti-racist.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Lecia decided to try her luck again this week and sent the admins a second article in the same series, which is produced by a group of women of color and white allies that she works with closely.

Something different happened when the post went live. Pantsuit Nation administrators and moderators, including Chamberlain, repeatedly stepped into the conversation with a set of guidelines for how to engage and posted a link to the group's comprehensive list of educational resources. They asked some members to take a step back before commenting further. A few of those members even left in protest.

Lecia says this isn't the Pantsuit Nation that she joined back in December. "The admins and moderators have done a 180," she says. "I think that because they even allowed the article, something must be changing."

Like Mac, Lecia believes that Pantsuit Nation could do much more to leverage the power of its members, but her recent encounters felt promising.

"What’s been really intriguing about Pantsuit Nation is it’s a coalition of people who share interests but have divergent perspectives and they’re trying to keep that coalition together," Caughell says.

This too mirrors what's happening nationwide as people of color, in particular, fight to dismantle racist institutions and policies but find white liberals and progressives don't share their views and priorities.

Whether or not Chamberlain and Pantsuit Nation will succeed where other movements have failed to resolve this conflict depends entirely on how the Facebook Page and nonprofit grow into themselves, and whether they can persuade the audience at their command to transform emotions into action while confronting personal bias and privilege.

Chamberlain is convinced Pantsuit Nation has been and will continue to be effective.

"Sometimes I think we nail it and sometimes I think we fail," she says. "There's a lot of room in between those things, and I’m not giving up yet."

Hidden Figures not only got three Oscar nominations -- it also inspired the U.S. State Department to bring 50 women in science, technology, engineering, and math together.

Apparently, nearly 80 embassies requested screenings of the film, which is based on the true story of three African-American women working at NASA to send an astronaut into space.

After the State Department noticed how much interest the movie was generating, it started the #HiddenNoMore STEM exchange program, according to The Hollywood Reporter. It will be run through the department's International Visitor Leadership Program.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Once in D.C., participants will watch the film and spend three weeks at organizations around the country to discuss and promote STEM careers and education for women. Back in LA, 20th Century Fox is hosting a two-day event for the group.

The movie-inspired program caught the attention of the cast. Taraji P. Henson, who co-starred with Janelle Monae and Octavia Spencer, tweeted about exchange.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Despite all the excitement, the State Department is still slated for budget cuts. Also, in May, Donald Trump proposed eliminating NASA's education program. All government science agency budgets have been slashed during the Trump administration.

It helps that Fox has donated about $400,000 to the program. But it's still a public-private partnership, according to THR.

President Trump signed a law to encourage more women to join STEM fields earlier this year and authorized the National Science Foundation to recruit more women. (Women only make up about a quarter of computer and math jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

The new law, however, drew ire for its lack of funding. Trump wants these programs and initiatives, but doesn't want to pay for them. Hopefully star power can help keep #HiddenNoMore funded.

It's no secret that tech has a diversity problem.

The big-name Silicon Valley companies that release their staffing figures every year often seem embarrassed to do so, because their workplaces are not inclusive or representative of the larger population — even after those companies vocally commit to changing the status quo.

And every year, we argue over the same question: Why don't firms like Yahoo, Facebook, and Google hire more women and people of color?

Hadi Partovi, CEO of Code.org, a nonprofit that works to create more diversity in tech, believes there's finally one promising solution within reach.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

That would be a popular new Advanced Placement course called Computer Science Principles. It debuted in classrooms nationwide last year as a broader introduction to computer science. Instead of focusing narrowly on programming, as the traditional course and exam do, CS Principles teaches subjects like networking, big data, cybersecurity, and app development.

"The traditional AP exam is if you want to become a coder," Partovi says. "The new exam is if you want to become a well-educated, well-rounded person."

It also has the potential to fundamentally change what's known as the "pipeline problem," or what tech companies describe as the difficulty of recruiting underrepresented applicants out of college and into tech jobs because they comprise a minority of graduates with a degree in computer science.

After just one year in high schools, the course more than doubled the number of female and underrepresented students who took a computer science AP exam. In 2016, only 12,642 female students took the traditional exam. This year, that number trended upwards as it has in previous years, and an additional 15,028 female students took the new test.

Similarly, the participation of "underrepresented minorities," which includes African American and Hispanic students, increased by nearly 170 percent from 2016 to 2017, with 13,024 students taking the new exam. Seventy percent of students received a passing score on the CS Principles test.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Partovi expected a surge in the number of students taking the new AP course and exam, but he was "ecstatic" to see participation in computer science at the high school level skyrocket.

He credits that partly to the course's widespread appeal. It's a modern take on computer science that relates to the internet and app development, even requiring students to submit a portfolio of app projects in order to complete the exam.

Code.org, along with other educational organizations, helped develop the curriculum for the course and has trained teachers with no computer science background how to teach the material in their classrooms.

Partovi is hopeful that the new AP course and exam will encourage more female and underrepresented students to pursue computer science in college and in their careers. That shift could be evident within four to five years as the first crop of students finishes their bachelor degrees and enters the job market.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Whether or not that can help reduce the so-called pipeline problem is a controversial subject. Many critics believe the challenges to diversifying tech's ranks have more to do with a culture that is unwelcoming or dismissive of people whose backgrounds and experiences don't match the stereotype of the brogrammer in a hoodie.

Partovi believes that both insular culture and pipeline challenges are at the heart of why tech companies haven't improved at hiring more diverse employees. If the AP course and test give young students the confidence and knowledge to stick with computer science in college when they might not have otherwise done so, it will make an important difference.

"The trend is in the right direction," says Partovi.

That's good news that the tech industry — and those who hope to join it one day — desperately needs.

The BBC has announced the next Doctor in Doctor Who will be -- for the first time in its 54-year history -- a woman, Jodie Whittaker from Broadchurch.

While nice humans on social media were thrilled about this much-delayed regeneration, the usual trolls were not happy, to say the least.

But the 13th Doctor is here to ask fans not to fear her gender in a really moving interview with the BBC.

Asked how it feels to be the first woman to get the lead role in one of the most beloved sci-fi shows in history, Whittaker said:

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

"It feels completely overwhelming; as a feminist, as a woman, as an actor, as a human, as someone who wants to continually push themselves and challenge themselves, and not be boxed in by what you’re told you can and can’t be. It feels incredible."

Whittaker, who will take over the TARDIS from Peter Capaldi this December, said it was "nerve-racking" to keep the secret.

"I’ve embroiled myself in a whole world of lies which is going to come back at me when this is announced!" she added.

Good luck Jodie!

Seems like Vogue might have missed the class on gender fluidity.

The fashion magazine on Thursday released its August issue featuring on its cover, model Gigi Hadid and singer Zayn Malik, who are dating in real life.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The article centres around Hadid and Malik being "part of a new generation embracing gender fluidity."

It goes on to mention the "new blasé attitude" towards gender identities, drawing on a conversation between the duo.

Here's how it went down:

Hadid: I shop in your closet all the time, don’t I?

Malik: Yeah, but same. What was that T-shirt I borrowed the other day?

Hadid: The Anna Sui?

Malik: Yeah, I like that shirt... It doesn't matter if it was made for a girl.

Hadid: Totally. It's not about gender. It's about, like, shapes. And anyway, it's fun to experiment...

Hold up.

"It"s not about gender, it's about, like, shapes". Yep, that's the face of gender fluidity right there.

People are pretty upset about the article:

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Thank you Vogue for opening our eyes to gender fluidity. This is just what we need in 2017.

"Ladies and gentlemen…"

If you frequent public transit, you're probably used to hearing this booming, gendered greeting over loudspeakers. But London Tube travelers are starting to hear a new greeting that hopes to welcome transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming commuters.

The familiar phrase "ladies and gentlemen" is being removed from announcements on the London's Underground's service in favor of a more gender-inclusive greeting.

Tube staff will now use greetings like, "Good morning, everyone," to preface announcements. All pre-recorded announcements will also be updated to feature gender-inclusive language.

"We want everyone to feel welcome on our transport network," Mark Evers, director of customer strategy at Transport for London (TfL), said in a statement. "We have reviewed the language that we use in announcements and elsewhere, and will make sure that it is fully inclusive, reflecting the great diversity of London."

TfL guidelines previously stated: "When using the Public Address (PA) system, you must start all service information announcements with ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ except for routine announcements such as 'mind the gap' and 'stand clear of the doors.'"

The shift to gender-inclusive greeting comes after LGBTQ activists in the city called for London mayor Sadiq Khan to change the greeting, especially in relation to the city's recent Pride celebrations.

The push to change the language was spurred after London commuter Aimee Challenor, who is a transgender woman, was told she "didn’t sound like a Miss" during a telephone call to the Tube's helpline in September 2016. Challenor's experience caused LGBTQ activists to advocate for gender training for Tube staff, while also advocating for Tube announcements that recognize a spectrum of gender identities.

For years, women in astronomy and planetary science have whispered their stories of gendered and racial harassment at the hands of colleagues and students, painting an anecdotal picture of a field that is hostile toward women, particularly women of color.

Even in the wake of highly publicized incidents of discrimination in these fields, the extent of harassment has been unquantified.

But now, thanks to newly published research, that picture is becoming clearer, and the findings paint a disturbing picture of experiences women face in planetary science and astronomy.

The new study, which is based on survey data collected from 2011 to 2015, shows that 39 percent of the 474 astronomers and planetary scientists surveyed reported that they have been verbally harassed in their current jobs, and 9 percent said they have been physically harassed. Nearly 67 percent of respondents identified as female, according to the study, which is a much higher percentage than national samples of people in space science.

Of particular note in the research — published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets — is the higher incidence of harassment among women of color.

"In this sample, in nearly every significant finding, women of color experienced the highest rates of negative workplace experiences, including harassment and assault," the study says.

The survey found that "40 percent of women of color reported feeling unsafe in the workplace as a result of their gender or sex, and 28 percent of women of color reported feeling unsafe as a result of their race."

'Barrier breaking women'

"This is the first study that I know of which sought to study women in a scientific field broadly and returned results that highlighted specifically the experiences of women of color," Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a theoretical physicist who was not an author of the study, said via email.

"In that sense, I think it is barrier breaking work on barrier breaking women."

Women of color in science on the whole are breaking barriers.

Black women made up just 6.6 percent of the science and engineering workforce in 2013, according to National Science Foundation data, with Hispanic women accounting for 6.9 percent of that workforce and Asian women making up 17.7 percent. By comparison, white women made up 66.9 percent of that workforce in 2013.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The new study also shows that 18 percent of women of color surveyed didn't go to conferences, meetings, or other professional events because "they did not feel safe attending." This is particularly significant considering that attending such events can be essential to advancing one's career.

Meetings and conferences are a main source of networking for researchers from around the country, so skipping these events can represent a huge loss of opportunity, especially for young researchers.

"My hope is that everyone will take away from this new study that it's on all of us. It's all of our responsibilities to try to create safe, inclusive, welcoming environments and that we're not doing that right at this moment, particularly for women of color," study co-author Christina Richey said in an interview.

A very public reckoning

Harassment in astronomy has garnered significant public attention since 2015, when reports came to light that Geoff Marcy — one of the most prominent researchers in the field at the time — sexually harassed students at the University of California, Berkeley.

From there, the floodgates opened, with women telling their stories of harassment publicly on Twitter using hashtags like #AstroSH, and others speaking with media outlets directly.

Stories of the "whisper networks" used by women to communicate information about harassers with one another in an attempt to keep their colleagues and students safe also came to light in that time.

This new study is important, in part, because it shows — with peer-reviewed data — that widely publicized incidents are not isolated.

Prescod-Weinstein, who has written about inequality in the sciences for years, hopes that this study helps others in space science “learn that what women (especially of color) have been telling them is not merely anecdotal but statistically significant."

Via Giphy

"I hope also they consider the impact that these experiences have on our ability to publish and research at competitive rates with our white, male colleagues," she said.

Richey acknowledges that the new study can be shocking for those who haven't experienced or witnessed this kind of harassment first-hand, but after that shock wears off, it's time for action.

Where to go from here

The researchers outlined what could be an ideal approach to addressing gendered and racial harassment in space science.

The study suggests that employers should craft a strict code of conduct, provide mandatory diversity awareness training, and that leaders in the field need to be the ones to model appropriate behavior.

In addition, the study says employers need to take quick and fair action when harassment and assault are reported.

For her part, Prescod-Weinstein doesn't have much confidence that universities will change their ways when it comes to protecting their faculty.

"I don't have a lot of faith in the system. The American Astronomical Society and American Physical Society, our professional advocacy groups, still refuse to say the three words, 'Black Lives Matter,'" Prescod-Weinstein said.

"When they're afraid of words that are just a statement of fact, how can we be confident that their actions will reflect these facts? And if our advocacy organizations don't put the pressure on, how can we expect educational institutions that are primarily focused on PR and money to feel the pressure?"

Perhaps the weight of peer-reviewed research bearing down on these universities will up the pressure enough for things to change.

For way too long, people have played menstruation for laughs. These hilarious jokes usually come back to a familiar punch line: Women just can't function when they bleed.

It's not just a joke, either. That trope has been used by men and women alike to justify why we can't have nice things, including a female president.

But a new study published Tuesday in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience offers some quality research to destroy the myth of the woman turned incompetent by her period.

The study took dozens of women and tested their cognitive abilities several times over the course of two consecutive menstrual cycles. The researchers found no consistent associations between fluctuations to the women's hormones and their cognition.

"I think this research shows very clearly that women function very well despite having hormonal changes," says Brigitte Leeners, the study's lead author and a professor in the Clinic for Reproductive Endocrinology at the University Hospital Zurich. "You cannot use hormonal changes as an excuse that there would be limitations in their performance."

Someone might want to alert Donald Trump, given his interest in women and how they bleed. Last year, he quipped that former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly got upset while moderating a presidential debate and had "blood coming out of her wherever." He denied the comment referenced her period, but it was hard not to see the connection.

Though previous research has suggested that estrogen and progesterone, both female sex hormones, may affect a woman's cognitive functioning, Leeners says past studies had significant limitations and methodological biases. For instance, none of them measured hormonal levels and cognition over the course of two periods, which would help establish a causal relationship between hormones and ability.

Leeners' team actually did initially see decreases in cognition during the first menstrual cycle. But when they performed the same tests for attention span, working memory, and cognitive bias during the second round, those effects disappeared. She believes the initial observation could've captured false positives caused by random variation. The difference between the first and second cycles could also reflect something called "practice effects." Basically, the women may have know the tasks from before and got better at answering correctly.

The researchers also compared the participants' performance to one another as well as analyzing it over time for each person, and they found no difference.

Via Giphy

Not testing women for consecutive periods may seem like a glaring oversight, but Leeners says there's a practical reason for it.

"If other research teams have limited resources, you’re quite tempted to do one cycle," she says. "And if you discover something significant, this is always nice to publish."

Participants in Leeners' study were paid 500 Euros each for extensive hormone measurements and comprehensive cognitive testing four times during each menstrual cycle. Sixty-eight women completed both the first and second rounds, and it's easy to see how the experiment would quickly get costly in both paying the subjects and researchers. Prior studies used much smaller sample sizes — some had fewer than 10 participants.

Leeners wants to see more rigorous studies on this subject, but her findings do line up with recent research showing the associations between hormone levels and cognition don't exist or are inconsistent. Plenty of women the world over could have told you that, but sometimes it takes science to help destroy a myth as powerful as this one.

If you love gender equality and can't get enough of clever internet memes, then the #passtheERA campaign is perfect for you.

The digital initiative wants to wipe the dust off an old idea and make it feel fresh to a generation that may not realize gender equality isn't enshrined in the nation's Constitution. It plans to do this by appealing to younger Americans in their native language: memes.

One image features Supreme Court justice and feminist hero Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a small asterisk in the corner that reads: "is not equal to men in the eyes of the law." Another image simply presents the text: "Dear Thomas Jefferson, you forgot something."

With more than three dozen memes and images, the campaign aims take on gender inequality with irreverence, humor, and wit. It also hopes to go viral.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The project is meant to draw attention to the Equal Rights Amendment, the nearly century-old language that would declare the sexes equal in the eyes of the law. Congress passed the amendment in 1972, and a majority of states had to ratify it within a decade. By 1982, the deadline passed with the amendment just three states short of ratification.

Since then, the ERA lost its prominence but never its champions. Legislators re-introduce the amendment every session in Congress. The ERA Coalition, which advocates for the amendment's adoption, has 50 nonprofit partners, and dozens of celebrity supporters like Ashley Judd, Jane Fonda, and Joss Whedon.

The ERA even went viral in 2015 when Patricia Arquette demanded its passage in her Oscars acceptance speech. Now activists are trying to capitalize on the heightened awareness with the #passtheERA campaign.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Kerry Stranman, head of insights at the "mission-driven" creative agency enso, helped lead the efforts as a "passion project." The idea for the awareness campaign came together last year, when it looked like Americans would elect their first female president.

At first, Stranman and her collaborators envisioned a video with celebrities talking about the importance of the ERA and finishing each other's sentences.

When Donald Trump won the election, suddenly that idea suddenly felt "tone deaf," Stranman says. As the resistance began pouring into the streets earlier this year, the group drew inspiration from their own participation in events like the Women's March and decided to create tools to help people start their own conversations about gender equality.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

"Instead of making a campaign with a brand, let’s just get people communicating in the language they're speaking in," says Stranman.

In April, enso helped convene 35 people from tech and advertising for a hackathon, where they came up with dozens of memes that translate well online. A few of them treat the "men" in the Constitution's "all men are created equal" as a typo to be fixed with Whiteout, spellcheck, or autocorrect. Others contrast the achievements of famous women like Sheryl Sandberg and Serena Williams with the fact that they don't enjoy full gender equality.

Stranman hopes some of the images go viral. They're instantaneously shareable to Facebook and Pinterest and can be emailed and linked as well. The campaign's toolbox also offers sample phone scripts so people can lobby their elected representative.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Stranman knows the odds of reviving the ERA are tough in the current political climate. It's hard enough to get the president of the United States to stop tweeting grotesque insults about women he dislikes.

Nevertheless, Stranman sees an unexpected opening for the ERA in the ongoing heated debate over American politics in the 21st century.

"Now is the time to assert what we demand in terms of what democracy looks like — and frankly to protect ourselves," says Stranman. "This is so important, so fundamental to our values."

Now it's up to the notoriously fickle internet to decide whether it agrees.

UPDATE: June 29, 2017, 6:27 p.m. PDT This story was updated to reflect changes to #passtheERA's gallery of images.

'Gender Creative Kids Canada' has developed an educational transgender toy in hopes to help children better understand gender identity and expression.

It only took a few hours for Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls Vol. 2 to smash the Kickstarter record for the fastest-funded publishing project in the crowdfunding platform's history.

Even the campaign's creators, Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo, were surprised at how quickly supporters met their $100,000 goal to produce a second illustrated book filled with 100 stories about brave, powerful women, in addition to a related podcast. By press time, the campaign had raised more than $229,000 from 4,365 backers.

"We didn’t expect the campaign to take off so fast, so quick," Cavallo says.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Cavallo and Favilli, cofounders of Timbuktu Labs, Inc., actually broke a previous Kickstarter record for the most-funded children's book with their first volume of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls. That campaign launched in May 2016 with a goal of $40,000 and went on to raise $675,614. With 29 days left to go, the second volume is positioned to outpace that record as well.

Though Cavallo and Favilli were amazed by the runaway success of their latest campaign, Kickstarter's director of publishing, Margot Atwell, wasn't as shocked.

"I was not surprised to see the massive outpouring of support for Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2," Atwell said in an email. "Francesca, Elena, and the Timbuktu team created a beautiful book in Good Night Stories, but they also created an enthusiastic community of people all over the world who are hungry for stories of women doing great things."

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The first volume has sold nearly 600,000 copies in 30 languages, according to Cavallo. She says Timbuktu regularly receives emails, letters, and messages from parents thanking the book's creators for helping to create "profound" moments with their children.

That's partly why Cavllo and Favilli decided to publish a second volume, but they'd also received 500 suggestions from readers who wanted to see more women featured in a future book. Some of the women in the new edition are obvious choices: the environmentalist Rachel Carson, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, and Beyoncé.

Others are lesser-known or unsung heroes, like Irena Sendlerowa, a Polish woman who secretly saved 2,500 Jewish children from Nazi forces during World War II, and Lella Lombardi, the only woman to score in a Formula One competition.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The success of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls proved to Cavallo that consumers are eager for stories that put women at the center of the action, a trend that's also turned films like Wonder Woman and Hidden Figures into blockbusters.

"In storytelling or Hollywood movies, the feeling is more or less we know all the stories ... and that is simply not true," Cavallo says. "By changing the lens and the people who create the stories behind and in front of the camera, and giving the opportunity to more female writers, we are discovering new stories."

Those new stories are certainly fueling Cavallo and Favilli's latest Kickstarter campaign. Now that they've exceeded their original $100,000 ask, they plan to announce stretch goals starting Wednesday. Their aim is to involve backers as much as possible.

"We have a very close relationship with our backers and readers of the book," Cavallo says. "They have an intimate and emotional relationship with the book." Consider that — and an admirable mission — the secret to Kickstarter success.

It's being heralded as a first in the country, where transgender women still face abuse and hostility from society.

The 23 women will be working at a new Kochi Metro station in Kerala, south India.

In the video, one woman says: "I also have ambition, hopes and dreams."

Another says: "I want you to look at me, and just see a person doing a job."

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The video was published by Kerala Information, the state's public relations department. It now has 1.2 million views and 27,400 shares on Facebook, since it was posted over the weekend.

The women are employed as part of Kerala's Kudumbashree state programme, which aims to empower all women by giving them jobs and opportunities.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

They will be deployed in different sections of the Kochi Metro, to do various jobs like housekeeping, selling tickets as well as canteen duties.

"We would like to give members of the transgender community their rightful share in different jobs at stations," Elias George, the managing director for Kochi Metro Rail, told The Hindu in May. "I hope other firms in Kerala give them a respectable opportunity to work."

India's apex court gave citizens the right to declare themselves as belonging to a non-binary third gender in 2014.

Despite that, many of the country's estimated two million transgender people find themselves facing hostility and abuse, and some thrown out of their homes are forced into sex work.

Kerala -- which has an estimated 25,000-strong transgender community -- offers free gender confirmation surgery at government hospitals, and promotes "inclusive education". The state is also home to India's first school for the transgender community, which opened in January this year.

Another day, another scorching tweet from Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.

This time Rowling took on the all-too-familiar scene of a man degrading a woman whose politics or beliefs he doesn't like.

The unnamed fellow, who Rowling sarcastically refers to as "Mr Liberal Cool Guy," made the mistake of calling UK Prime Minister Theresa May a "whore."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

That was enough for Rowling to unfollow the culprit, and spend 14 withering tweets explaining why, "If you can’t disagree with a woman without reaching for all those filthy old insults," you've failed at upholding liberal values.

"[F]emaleness is not a design flaw," she wrote. "If your immediate response to a woman who displeases you is to call her a synonym for her vulva, or compare her to a prostitute, then drop the pretence and own it: you’re not a liberal. You’re a few short steps away from some guy hiding behind a cartoon frog."

Preach, J.K., preach.

There's a debate raging in Silicon Valley this week that you should really know about.

Though it may look like just a few heated Twitter exchanges and at least one scathing blog post, it's really a high-profile fight over who gets to decide how we value work in the 21st century.

We can probably all agree that dedicated, diligent employees are essential for any workplace, but some people argue for more — they want you to become a workaholic, singularly obsessed with achieving the company's mission.

This is no small difference, and you probably feel the repercussions in your everyday life. You may be an industrious soul, devising creative solutions for whatever problems come your way, and are happy to devote your talent and time to your employer. But you might also resent the fact that your days are long — so long that you rarely get to wind down with a bike ride, see close friends, or even spend time with your kids.

On Monday, Blake Robbins, an associate at the venture capital firm Ludlow, gave voice to such experiences, daring to challenge the culture of workaholism that pervades the startup world.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

"When I first got into tech. I thought it was 'cool' to work on the weekends or holidays," Robbins tweeted. "I quickly realized that's a recipe for disaster." In a follow-up post he added, "I promise you...your competition isn't beating you because they are working more hours than you. It's because they are working smarter."

The remarks were sensible personal observations, but an hour later entrepreneur and investor Keith Rabois‏ issued a two-word rebuttal: "Totally false."

At first, the thread launched a conversation among male entrepreneurs mostly on the merits of nonstop work, and soon more skeptical people, including women, started to weigh in. Some clearly felt invested in the status quo, while others were alarmed by it.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The workaholism at the center of this debate demands that you take an endless string of sacrifices in stride — as if a full-tilt obsession with work, to the exclusion of all else, is the only path to success. It ignores the reality that a person can be passionate, persistent, and hard-working and also find fulfillment in other aspects of life. Indeed, that satisfaction probably enhances their vision in ways that are difficult to quantify. The overbearing philosophy of workaholism, which is rooted in macho stereotypes about what hard work should look like, also conveniently leaves out some difficult facts.

First, that model of work in corporate America was pioneered by white men whose wives, often with aid from domestic workers, took care of running a household. Without such an arrangement, it would be literally impossible to work long hours or around the clock and have any caregiving responsibilities. And yet we continue to pretend that a "strong" work ethic requires nothing but your own iron will.

Second, workaholism is costly, even if you think the brute force of racking up hours in the office or on the road will inevitably yield innovation and success. What often happens instead is burnout, which can become an expensive problem for a company. A culture that promotes relentless work also sidelines a lot of talented women. They may feel that in order to be competitive with their male peers they must leave their kids in daycare for nine hours so that a nanny or grandparent (if they even have that support) can put them to bed, and decide that worshipping at the altar of workaholism isn't for them.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

A work culture that values how many hours you put in above all else also sets up the perverse expectation that men, by nature, won't care as much about spending quality time with their children, that it's expendable if the money or opportunity is right. And, hey, it might be for some men and women, but this is exactly how we end up with a less-than-diverse workforce.

Women of color, in particular, are effectively penalized twice by a philosophy of professional work created by white men. That myopic vision about which candidates are a good "culture fit" often leave women of color out of the picture, and when they do break through that barrier, they must still reckon with the practical challenges of having a family or a personal life at a company that thinks both of those things should come second to your work. This isn't just a personal matter: Research has found that a more diverse staff is more likely to produce better financial returns.

This old-fashioned approach to productivity and creativity rests on a laundry list of assumptions about who you're hiring and who's holding down the home front. And even if someone's wife or partner has her own job, the societal expectation is that she'll drop off and pick up the kids, take them to their doctor's appointments, and volunteer for field trips.

Workaholism perpetuates a macho vision of what the most valuable efforts should look like: grueling, never-ending, and capable of destroying your competition. These ideas didn't just materialize from the ether. They're engrained in how we're taught to value the work that men and women do, but they're also a special feature of the startup world.

As David Heinemeier Hansson, cofounder and chief technology officer of Basecamp, pointed out in his blog post about workaholism, venture capital "money men" set these expectations by trying to "compress a lifetime's worth of work into the abbreviated timeline of a venture fund."

While Silicon Valley companies like Facebook and Google fret about how to increase the number of women in their ranks, few leaders in tech would suggest shortening the work day for the same pay. Such a strategy probably looks like an invitation to employees to take their jobs less seriously, even if it might help attract and retain more diverse talent.

People should be offended, angry even, that they have to defend their desire to spend even a few hours a day with their loved ones. For single or childless workers, the burden is different but still punishing: Without the borderline acceptable excuse of missing a meeting or coming in late because they needed to tend to a child, they instead feel the pressure to have no personal life at all.

That parents haven't revolted against an average work day that's getting longer and now stands at 8.8 hours is worth reflecting on. While it may not seem like a long day, it's certainly longer than most school days and day care availability when you also factor in the time it takes to commute.

The silence about this logistical nightmare probably has something to do with the long shadow of the Great Recession, which gave companies more power to wield over employees nervous about being laid off.

Yet there's also the long march of white women entering the professional workforce during the 1970s and '80s; to challenge the length of a work day widely accepted by one's males peers would be to admit defeat in the hoary "can she have it all?" debate.

Instead, the women who stayed in those jobs found individual workarounds to spend time with their family, or simply decided not to be as present as they once hoped. The status quo survived in tact with some modifications, like remote work and flex-scheduling. Those concessions make it easier, but you still work the same, if not longer, hours.

The truth is that our system for valuing work and appraising the contributions of talented, dedicated employees is broken because it places so much emphasis on time. What we need are companies and business leaders open to the idea that a macho work culture actually holds them back and may even hurt their long-term chances for success. (See Travis Kalanick's Uber troubles, if you need more convincing.)

We need businesses that are willing to experiment with new ways of measuring creativity and productivity. Most of all, we desperately need senior leaders and mid-level managers to show their employees every day that it's acceptable — even encouraged — for them to have outside pursuits, including families. Defending workaholism at this point demonstrates a tremendous lack of imagination about what people can achieve when they're fulfilled at both work and home.

But there's something arguably more sinister happening beneath the surface of that apologism. People who justify workaholism often can't admit that many of America's favorite heroes — renowned for their relentless work ethic — built their achievements and empires on the backs of women and domestic workers, not to mention the innumerable sacrifices of employees who might not have been paid fairly and spent far too much time away from their families.

If that sounds quaint or naive, it's time to rethink why you work so hard in the first place. Sure, it feels good to dedicate yourself to a mission or calling, and great if you can make money while doing so. But if we happily comply with the idea that gifted visionaries are within their rights to ask us to forgo our full humanity in pursuit of their fame and fortune, that ultimately means we trade in countless precious moments with our loved ones so that someone else can become a legend.

It's long past time to strike a better bargain for ourselves.

Transgender Twitter users aren't here for the platform's gendered assumptions. And they sure aren't hesitating to make that known.

Here's the deal: Twitter released a new set of tools on May 17 which allow users to see and control the data advertisers use to target ads on the social media platform. While the move was a clear effort to increase transparency and trust between users and the social media machine, the actual data Twitter has collected is giving many users pause.

Notably, many trans and gender-nonconforming users are troubled that Twitter has been guessing the gender of users based on the gender most strongly associated with a user's "profile and activity."

Though it's not clear what portions of a user's profile or activity contribute to a gender guess, many have drawn the conclusion that Twitter must rely on some pretty bogus gender stereotypes to decipher gender. And, as we all know, stereotypes can often be wrong.

While it may be funny for non-trans users to see that the mysterious algorithm got their gender vastly wrong, trans and gender-nonconforming Twitter users are speaking out about how assuming gender can be harmful. For some of these users, the algorithm picked their sex assigned at birth, not their actual gender identity. And that can be incredibly invalidating, hurtful, and angering.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Twitter does allow users to edit their assumed gender by selecting male, female, or writing in a gender identity outside the binary. But that's only possible after you reckon with the gender chosen for you.

Twitter did not have any comment on how the algorithm works, or the reactions of trans and gender-nonconforming users.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Tools for guessing gender aren't singular to Twitter. Other tech giants, like Google, assume the gender of users based on their activity to better target ads and content. But given the growing ability to express a spectrum of gender identities in society, the model needs some serious updating -- or phasing out.

UPDATE: May 22, 2017, 10:53 a.m. EDT Updated with Twitter's response to inquiry.

Watch: What parenting a transgender teen teaches you

In real life, there aren't superheroes who save us from doom or injustice.

Instead, we look to Hollywood directors like Joss Whedon to transform those comic book fantasies into a spectacle for the small screen (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) or large screen (The Avengers).

But now Whedon is tackling a real-life threat that could endanger millions of Americans. On Wednesday, he debuted a short film illustrating what might happen if Planned Parenthood shutters clinics across the country.

It would sound far-fetched if the House hadn't recently passed a healthcare bill that proposes revoking Planned Parenthood's federal funding for one year. If that provision becomes law, it would mean low-income women couldn't use Medicaid to access routine services from Planned Parenthood — and it would be a devastating financial blow to the nonprofit health care provider.

Whedon's three-minute film imagines what women's lives, and their families' lives, would look like without access to birth control, cancer and STD screenings, and sex education. While the fictional storylines can be confusing as they follow the fate of three women, the bottom line is that the future is pretty damn bleak. Research shows that's not an exaggeration.

Whedon didn't hold back in a statement about the project: "For so many, there’s an obvious tipping point between hope and despair," he said. "Planned Parenthood is a beacon of hope, and anyone trying to shut it down is committing an act of evil."

Leave it to Joss Whedon to draw the battle lines between good and malevolent forces.

Is it OK to be a virgin? Is it OK to experiment with other guys? Is it OK to be the little spoon in bed?

These are just some of the questions that men ask themselves — and Google — when no one is looking, according to a new ad from Axe that aims to help "break the cycle of toxic masculinity."

Don't spit out your coffee just yet. Yes, this is the same Axe that once relished running ads portraying adult women as slaves to their senses and casting men as lonely losers — until, that is, they doused themselves in Axe body spray, at which point the ladies came running.

Not anymore. The new "Is It OK for Guys?" spot is the latest installment of Axe's "Find Your Magic" campaign, which launched last year by urging men to ditch macho stereotypes and embrace a more enlightened version of masculinity instead.

Now, Axe wants its customers to know they're not alone in questioning the emotional straightjacket that is traditional manhood.

"What we wanted to do is show ... that there is this habit of guys going online in the privacy of their own home asking all these questions," says Rik Strubel, global vice president for Axe.

Axe is probably the last brand you'd expect to make this pivot. Yet, its unlikely trajectory from peddling sexist messages for profit to becoming a woke critic of machismo — also for profit — holds valuable lessons for the rest of us struggling to prevent, contain, and reverse the damage of toxic masculinity.

If Axe can take a hard look in the mirror and decide to change its retrograde ways, perhaps that unlikely transformation will inspire men skeptical of overhauling their own concept of what it means to be a man. Still, a woke advertising campaign is just that — a glossy vision of social change that might give you the feels, but ultimately can't destroy thousand-year-old ideas that are enjoying a resurgence in the form of Donald Trump's strongman act.

Toxic masculinity is a popular phrase in academic and activist circles, but it's not that hard to spot in pop culture if you know the signs. Consider Trump its prideful mascot: a man who can't stand that one of his top surrogates is mocked by a woman on Saturday Night Live, tosses off suggestions about killing the families of terrorists, says nothing when crowds of people chant "lock her up" about Hillary Clinton, and bullies anyone who questions his authority, even a Gold Star dad.

Toxic masculinity is what happens when traits traditionally associated with male identity — strength, stoicism, aggression — are put into overdrive, often in pursuit of personal or professional power. While it might be appealing to Trump and some of his supporters, hyper-masculine doesn't sell like it once did in the consumer marketplace, and Axe knows that.

"What we're seeing now is that society has changed and marketing has to change," says Strubel. "It was time for the brand to move on."

Indeed. Axe's parent company Unilever, which also owns the body positivity-obsessed brand Dove, announced last year that it would root out sexist stereotypes from all of its campaigns. Axe is also building partnerships with three different nonprofit organizations — Promundo, The Representation Project, and Ditch the Label — that fight harmful gender stereotypes.

Later this year, those groups will coordinate to seed the internet with content optimized to reach men with resources when they Google questions about concerns like mental health issues or bullying. Axe will do something similar for men who turn to the internet with shame-filled questions about grooming. It's a savvy play to win new customers, but also speaks to the homophobia men can experience when they start using grooming products.

Axe won't stand for that anymore, and it's telling customers they shouldn't either.

That's a great start to dismantling macho attitudes, but last year's presidential campaign proved that toxic masculinity is still alive, well, and even wins at the voting booth.

"It's very, very difficult for any sort of campaign to overtake and overpower the ideological force of toxic masculinity, which is coming from the most powerful pulpit in this country," says Ibram Kendi, an assistant professor of African American history at the University of Florida and author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.

And then there's Axe's rallying cry: Damn the critics and be yourself. That's an effective line for personal empowerment, but it also gives consumers the warm glow of feeling like they're champions of equality without having to do much work understanding the many ways in which society condones or rejects a man's expression of masculinity based on his race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

What we need to understand, says Kendi, is the way bigotries intersect to create a "massive hierarchy" among men. So Axe can successfully raise awareness about toxic masculinity, but sympathetic consumers still might not insist on every man's liberation from damaging stereotypes if it means they can keep their place in the pecking order.

Getting to the heart of that struggle is much harder than producing a provocative 30-second or minute-long commercial that goes viral.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Over the past year, however, not every battle was lost. Public pressure on Fox News to fire accused sexual harasser Bill O'Reilly — another epitome of toxic masculinity with his violent, racist on-air outbursts and father-knows-best politics — led to his dismissal last month. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is finally being forced to account and atone for a hostile management style that contributed to internal sexual harassment claims and potentially illegal business tactics.

Meanwhile, there are promising examples of what masculinity can be when not constrained by antiquated ideas. When a crying Jimmy Kimmel devoted a recent monologue to the diagnosis and treatment of his newborn son's unexpected congenital heart defect, he acted like a normal human being with perfectly reasonable emotions — and drew awareness to both a life-threatening medical condition and the political battle over health care reform.

The second season of Aziz Ansari's Netflix series Master of None is a revelation of masculine vulnerability. Ansari's character Dev may be heartbroken and lonely, but he doesn't need to conquer other women to feel better about himself. Instead, he seeks connection with someone he can call his equal. Dev's friendship with a character named Arnold is an exploration of male affection; they tend to each other's feelings without a second thought.

Examples like these, contrasted with daily exercises in toxic masculinity from Trump and his enablers, hint at a culture wrestling with its own identity.

"It’s not our dad’s manhood anymore," says Gary Barker, president and CEO of Promundo, a nonprofit organization that engages men and boys in gender equality. "There's a lot more acceptance ... but the other side of that, that tough guy manhood, that is frighteningly alive as well."

That split is clear in research recently published by Promundo and Axe. Roughly a quarter of male American survey respondents said men shouldn't have to do household chores and should, if necessary, use violence to get respect. Those ratios are still too high, but feel less apocalyptic than the percentage of American men who believed, for example, that guys should be breadwinners and should know where his wife or girlfriend is at all times (44 and 46 percent, respectively).

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Barker and Strubel know a lot of hard work remains to shift the way men think about their masculinity, and that's why they're continuing to track their evolving views through research. But Barker is optimistic about Axe's unexpected contribution to these efforts. As just one front in the sprawling fight to break down toxic masculinity, an advertising campaign that has the potential to reach millions isn't a small thing.

Plus, Barker believes the fact that Axe sought redemption for its past sins is actually a selling point.

"I think they've got a dramatic story," he says of the brand. "If they can do it ... man in the White House, here’s your chance, too. Look, you can turn the page, and it's a happy place to be."

It's time to cut the charade: Ivanka Trump is not the hero that will thwart the Trump administration's worst policies and rhetoric and no amount of pleading will change that.

Plenty of Trump detractors came to that realization long ago, many right around when she stood by her father after his "pussy grabbing" comments became public. But some are still holding out foolish hope. This weekend, the actress Debra Messing spent part of an award acceptance speech imploring the first daughter to do more than pay lip service to female empowerment.

“It’s not enough to simply say that women’s issues are important to you," Messing said at the annual GLAAD Media Awards in New York City. "It’s time to do something."

On Friday, New York Times columnist Gail Collins contrasted Ivanka Trump's feminist sloganeering (#WomenWhoWork) with her dad's decision to appoint opponents of both abortion and affordable, accessible birth control to top posts in the Department of Health and Human Services.

"[S]he’s not witless and she obviously knows that birth control plays an important role in working women’s lives," Collins wrote. "You think she’d put in a word. No sign."

Collins' opinion piece was titled, "Where’s Ivanka When We Need Her?"

The short answer is that she isn't coming to rescue you from your worst, Handmaid's Tale-inspired nightmares. That shouldn't surprise anyone.

The faith that some liberals put in Trump's ability to influence her father from the left, particularly on women's issues, was both wildly misplaced and speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding about what gender equality means in 2017. That battle must lift up and liberate every girl and woman -- Trump is woefully unqualified to do that.

Before the resistance and the women's march and her father's improbable election, people could look admiringly at Trump and see a stylish mother of three who ran successful businesses while parroting talking points about empowerment. They didn't stop to ask whether she was really that interested in elevating women beyond just those who decide to conquer the boardroom. Or anyone other than herself and her brand.

The truth is, according to a New York Times story published last week, Trump coined the #WomenWhoWork catchphrase in order to attract women who were reticent to buy her fashion line. She didn't come by her full-throated embrace of gender equality honestly, even if in her new book Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success she insists the campaign "evolved very organically."

If you looked at her Facebook or Instagram feeds alone, where she shares the stories of women from diverse backgrounds who are breaking barriers or overcoming odds, you just might think she's selflessly used her brand to elevate important issues with an unyielding conviction.

Look more closely and you'll see that her messages can be self-interested, like when she mentioned an event that celebrated women in the jewelry industry, and noted the "very validating" positive response to her "young brand." Or when, in 2015, she promoted a $4,699 six-month "masterclass" in women's leadership, for which she served as one of three featured experts.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

There's nothing inherently wrong with these posts, there's just no reason why they or other public statements should lead people to believe that Trump is capable of doing more than operating within the comfortable boundaries of corporate feminism. Provided that a cause aligns with her brand and maybe even expands her market share -- like promoting girls and women in STEM or highlighting female entrepreneurs -- Trump seems happy to serve up bland bromides and offer easy gestures of support.

A Twitter search of her @IvankaTrump handle for words like gay, abortion, birth control, LGBT, and refugee, which might signal her willingness to wade into controversy if it meant being a vocal ally to vulnerable communities, turns up nothing. She's tweeted the word equality three times; one of those occasions was to congratulate Chelsea Clinton, of all people, in 2015 for her "amazing" work on gender equality.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Those who wanted to take comfort in her presence saw her statements about empowerment as something more significant. They took for granted that Trump might care about access to birth control for low-income women. They figured she would probably find a Muslim and refugee ban abhorrent too. They thought surely she would vocally protest a policy that would have separated undocumented immigrant women from their children at the border.

Her book's soaring language about wanting to empower women makes for a jarring comparison when measured against the Trump administration's policies.

"I am committed to working harder than ever to help unleash the full power or women and girls to accelerate the pace of progress both in our country and around the world -- and I look forward to furthering the cause together," she writes in the preface. 

The words are technically correct and in the right order but feel meaningless since Trump seems to draw invisible, puzzling lines around which gender equality issues she'll speak about and which she'll let languish.

The media rushed to cast Trump as a "moderating" force in the White House, perhaps believing that any coherent person to the left of chief strategist and right-wing extremist Steve Bannon would count as a victory in governance. Too many liberals, pundits, and conservatives wary of Donald Trump heard his daughter drop the right buzzwords and assumed that if she talked about the needs and concerns of wealthy white women, it could only lead to good things for everyone.

That has rarely been the case in American history, and it's time to stop pretending that Trump is a force for genuine equality -- or that she can be persuaded to do progressives' bidding if they ask nicely enough.

She should be treated as she behaves. When she pens an op-ed on the importance of investing in women globally to spur economic growth, but stays silent about an executive order that makes it much harder for vulnerable women to get access to birth control and reproductive health care, she shouldn't get to cloak herself in the warm glow of female empowerment. When she verbally champions mothers and children but then is pictured eagerly smiling at news that the House passed the American Health Care Act, which would seriously undermine access to maternity benefits for women, she should have to answer for it.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

When Trump is pressed on questions like these, she dodges, as she did again and again last month in an interview with CBS' Gayle King. She refuses to talk about her values beyond generic, agreeable platitudes. For someone who loves leadership advice, Trump appears to have no interest in being held accountable for her role in an administration that, in both action and rhetoric, is opposed to real gender equality.

No one really knows how Trump feels about more complex issues that are far more central to gender equality than how many women serve on a company's board. She may in fact be guided by a perverse combination of bootstrapping -- the idea that hard work and personal responsibility are the sole determinants of your fate -- and corporate feminism.

That would be an ironic gospel for someone born an heir to a real estate empire. It's also a narrative that can give advantaged white women all the opportunity in the world, leaving no room for acknowledging, at the very least, the impact of racist policies that have endured for generations.

It would be something if we knew Trump's view on race relations, but she avoids the topic studiously. While she's pledged $100,000 in book proceeds each to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and the National Urban League, she hasn't spoken up about issues that affect communities of color.

Though she could have turned to that subject plenty of times in her book, perhaps spending time to discuss research on implicit bias in the workplace or even addressing the lopsided balance of power between "working women" and the women of color they often employ to care for their children, she can't bring herself to step into that breach.

Women Who Work does, however, quote a sentence from Toni Morrison's Beloved, a book about slavery: "Bit by bit ... she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another."

Trump uses it as the preface for a chapter on how to boost your productivity. It takes a certain amount of gall and willful ignorance to interpret those words as self-help jargon for the working woman.

It's possible that a ghostwriter Googled the quote and added it to the book with Trump's approval. Yet even that scenario speaks clearly to her character. When it's convenient and burnishes her image, she'll use someone else's words, ideas, or principles to enrich herself. When it serves neither purpose, she's silent.

That should tell you everything you need to know about Ivanka Trump.

When you think of the Girl Scouts, cookies probably come to mind first. But the defining trait of the century-old organization isn't those delicious treats. Instead, it's a fierce commitment to equality and inclusivity.

Those values were on display in a viral photo of a young scout named Lucie, protesting at a neo-Nazi march in Brno, Czech Republic. The World Organization of the Scout Movement shared the picture in a Facebook post Tuesday.

"People from all walks of life, and #Scouts among them, came to the streets during an extreme right march yesterday to express their support for values of diversity, peace, and understanding," the post read.

While the Girl Scouts of the USA doesn't have a direct relationship with the Czech Republic scouting organization to which Lucie belongs, it is part of a "global sisterhood" of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts in 146 countries.

"This photo is a great representation ... of what it means to be a Girl Guide/Girl Scout, standing up for your values, and working for a peaceful and just society," Andrea Bastiani Archibald, chief girl and parent expert for Girl Scouts of the USA, said in an email.

Here are four more examples that illustrate the Girl Scouts' values — and how girls have stood up for those beliefs.

1. Helping women vote

Girl Scouts supported suffrage by helping women vote however they could. In the photo below, taken in 1921, a Girl Scout tends to a woman's baby while she cast her ballot. Girl Scouts were also encouraged to learn about the government, voting, and the election process to earn their Civics and Citizen badges.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

2. Racial and ethnic equality

When Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Scouts in 1912, she intended it to be for all girls, no matter their race, ethnicity, ability, and income. A Latina troop formed in 1922, a troop for girls with disabilities was founded in 1917, and girls in Japanese internment camps continued to receive Girl Scout support while detained in the 1940s.

Black girls were part of the third U.S. troop formed in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1913. By 1951, according to the Girl Scouts, there were more than 1,500 racially integrated troops across the country and more than 1,800 African-American troops, most of them located in the south.

By the 1950s, more local councils adopted integration, and Martin Luther King Jr. called the Girl Scouts a "force for desegregation."

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

By the late 1960s, Girl Scouts were actively involved in the Civil Rights movement. They held conferences called Speakouts to discuss ways to eliminate prejudice. The organization also launched a nationwide effort named ACTION 70 to help build better relationships among people regardless of race, religion, age, or nationality.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

3. Religious acceptance

Frightened and upset about anti-Muslim rhetoric, two troops in Orange County, California, decided in 2016 to hold an open house at their mosque, and welcomed Girl Scout families to join them.

"These girls are not the type to just sit by and complain about a problem," said troop leader Heba Morsi. "In a troop discussion, they decided they wanted to tell their own story — to take ownership of that and set the record straight by inviting the community into their mosque and starting a real conversation about Islam and what it means to them."

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

4. Transgender rights

When the Girl Scouts of Western Washington received a $100,000 donation in 2015, the chapter was thrilled. But when they discovered the money came with strings attached — preventing the Girl Scouts from using it to support transgender girls — they decided to return it to the donor.

Losing the funding was a huge blow, but the Girl Scouts of Western Washington launched an Indiegogo campaign called #ForEVERYGirl Campaign. The end result? They raised a whopping $338,282 — and made a big statement about solidarity for transgender rights.

Superstars of STEM is a new program by Science and Technology Australia that aims to smash the stereotypical portrait of people in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).The plan is to identify 30 superstar women currently in STEM, and work with them to create role models for young women and girls, and thus move towards equal representation in the media of men and women in STEM.

As the new ambassador and a mentor for Superstars of STEM, my role is to encourage broad participation, which we hope will elevate the visibility of women STEM professionals in public life.

Encouraging more women in STEM

There are already some programs that support female scientists and technologists in a bid to break down systemic obstacles. These include the Science in Australia Gender Equity program. Others aim to inspire women to study STEM subjects, such as Code like a Girl or to help young women build their techno-confidence, such as SheFlies and Robogals.

Adding to this picture, Superstars of STEM aims to address public perception and is founded on the principle that visibility matters in achieving equality.

Rather than simply attempting to shoehorn women into the public eye, this new program will work with 30 women in STEM to equip them with the skills, confidence and opportunities to become role models. This approach will build on the work being done to address systemic issues facing female scientists and technologists.

A recent European study by Microsoft found that most girls became interested in STEM at around the age of 11, but their interest began to wane at 15. This is an important age, as girls are starting to make decisions that will set the trajectory of their academic life.

The lack of role models in STEM was identified as the key factor that influenced the girls in the study, as well as a lack of practical experience with STEM subjects at school. On Twitter, 92% of the most followed scientists are male. When women scientists are mentioned in the media, they often tend to be described by their appearance rather than their achievements.

The need for more female STEM role models has also been echoed in similar reports and programs in Asia, the UK, Africa and the United States.

In Australia, more than half of all undergraduates and half of PhD students are female. Almost 60% of junior science lecturers are women. But women comprise just 16% of top-level science and technology researchers, professors and professionals.

Role models

As a young kid gazing at the stars, my role models were pioneering astronauts like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and eccentric types such as the late, great astronomy broadcaster Sir Patrick Moore.

I thought that was enough for me, until as a 16-year-old I met Britain’s first astronaut, Helen Sharman, at Space School UK. At that moment I suddenly realised that every one of my role models in the fields of astronomy and space science had been male.

Meeting this real-life STEM superstar had a transformational influence on me. It even spurred me on to apply for the European Astronaut Program in 2009.

As someone who is passionate about astrophysics and science education I have inadvertently become a role model myself. But the continued lack of diverse role models in STEM makes me wonder how many missed opportunities and how much unrealised potential continues to be lost. Have our young, modern-day Marie Curies, Ruby Payne-Scotts, Ada Lovelaces and Isobel Bennetts passed up on science as a subject in favour of more conventional choices?

The new superstars

In its first year, Superstars of STEM is placing 30 women in the public eye, by equipping them with advanced communication skills. This will include media training, meetings with decision-makers, and opportunities to showcase their work.

Participants will also be supported to speak with girls directly at local high schools and public events, along with establishing a public profile online.

There are too few transformational and brilliant women in the public eye. Every success in science and technology in Australia is built on the work and contributions of people across the genders. For the sake of our girls, we need to celebrate these outstanding scientists and their work.

I imagine a time when we ask children to draw a scientist and they draw somebody who looks like mathematician Nalini Joshi, molecular biologist Suzanne Cory, or astronomer Karlie Noon.

The measure of the success of Superstars of STEM will be whether young Australian women can turn on the television, read a newspaper or engage with social media and see women experts presenting STEM as an exciting and viable career. I can’t wait to witness the opportunities this change will bring.

This article was co-authored with Kylie Walker, Chief Executive Officer of Science and Technology Australia.