Feminist Current Archives - Lori Day Author

Stop glamourizing the pain of high heels

This is not a photo of my dead grandmother’s feet, but it matches the image I have of hers in my mind. She was a practicing podiatrist in Georgia in the 1940s — one of a handful of female physicians of any sort in that state, a feminist success story in her own way. At just under 4’11”, she wore heels every day of her adult life while treating the disfigured feet of her female patients who did the same. The irony did not escape her, as she self-castigated on this particular topic routinely within earshot. Read more…

How much more could women achieve if they rejected expensive & time-consuming beauty routines?

Riding in the car with my mother the other day, she remarked that I am judgmental of women who care a lot about their appearance. She told me that she wears makeup every day not because she feels she has to, but because it is fun. She explained that Botox and plastic surgery are things that can help women feel good about themselves. “Your graying hair is making you look older,” she said. Yeah, I know… Read more…

It’s White Men All the Way Down

How did we get here? It’s an existential question that can be taken several ways. From the primordial soup emerged microscopic life forms that evolved across millennia until, in the Pleistocene Epoch, early humans walked the Earth. That’s one version of how “we” got “here.” Read more…

We need a Mandemic

There are not enough baby elephant videos in the world to soothe and distract me from all of the pain and suffering I see daily in the news. At the moment, I am obsessed with the Zika virus, which has just been declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization. As more and more babies are born with microcephaly, male politicians in Latin American countries are requesting that women not get pregnant for the next two years, while simultaneously denying them access to contraception and abortion. Read more…

Fifteen ways the world revolves around men’s penises

We all know that, in a patriarchy, the world revolves around men’s penises in a general sense, but here are 15 ways we can see this reality manifest itself, more specifically:

1) Male genitalia taking up space

Manspreading on public transportation and in other public seating situations is epidemic. The viral load in this miasma of douchiness has so far eluded all disease management techniques. If we’ve reached the point of needing to put up “Dude… Stop the Spread, Please” signs in subway cars — and we have — that tells me we see this phenomenon as an infection of sorts,hopefully addressed by PSAs… You know, like “Get Your Flu Shot Today” signs at CVS. Read more…

Let’s Talk About Male Hormones

Ladies, have I got a protip for you! Do not Google any topic that includes the words female,leadership, and hormones. Don’t do it because you will see pages and pages of articles like this and this and this, leading you to assault your own computer, and repairs will be expensive. Also, “hormones” will be blamed for the tech-assault. Read more…

Male Violence is the Worst Problem in the World

I guess I’m a man-hater, writing a title like that, using my keypad to fire a shot across the bow of an entire gender. #NotAllMen are violent, and some women are, and we all know that, but this conversation is still the Internet equivalent of strapping on a suicide vest and detonating it with the click of a mouse. Read more…

Harem-seeking men use legalization of gay marriage to pursue legal right to hoard women

I just can’t take it. Gay marriage becomes the law of the land in the U.S., we all rejoice, and now we have Montana jackass, Nathan Collier, storming the Yellowstone County Courthouse for a second marriage license so that he may become a legal bigamist, crediting Chief Justice John Roberts’ dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges as opening the door to the possibility of this marital windfall. Well, give the man some Golden Grizzly Ale and a dozen Rocky Mountain oysters! And he’s not alone — others are queued up behind him, sights set on the Supreme Court, excited to increase the number of sammiches and sexytimes coming their way. Read more…

The tyranny of the anecdote: Irrational fear of false rape accusations based on one-off stories trumpeted by media

If you are the mother of a son and are worried that your son will be falsely accused of rape, your time would be much better spent worrying that your son will be fairly accused of rape, because the odds are far greater that he will actually be a rapist than be falsely identified as one. The low incidence of false rape claims is extremely similar to the low incidence of false reporting of all other crimes, such as mugging claims or identity theft claims, and we do not hear anyone thrashing and screaming about all the people unjustly ensnared by other people who lie about thievery, and the need to roll back the penalties for such crimes due to all the false reporting. No. Only the crime of rape is widely subjected to the tyranny of the anecdote. Read more…

Aging While Female Is Not Your Worst Nightmare

I’m going to tell you a story that is so common and so troubling it is effectively split off from the emotional lives of young women, tucked away into whatever neural recesses exist for the purpose of shelving information that feels irrelevant yet distantly threatening. I wonder if young women will read this? The irony is that they probably won’t, and the silently nodding heads will be ones that are graying, like mine. Read more…

Why the Conversation About Replacing the Word ‘Feminist’ is Moot

Equalist. Humanist. Egalitarian. It won’t work. No rebrand for the word “feminist” will succeed and here’s why (with apologies to the optimistic among us). Read more…

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