Feminism

While Downton’s plot twist was more cynically deployed than Scandal’s, both shows exploited the drama of rape instead of exploring the realities of it.

I think I’m speaking for a bunch of girls when I say that the idea that feminism is completely natural and shouldn’t even be something that people find mildly surprising. It’s just a part of being a girl in 2013.

People will often say, 'Why are you talking about feminism? Why aren't you talking about human rights?' And yes, but we're talking about [women] because there is a group of people in the world who fought for centuries, who have been systematically deprived of rights because they were women. So that's why we talk about women. That's why it has to be about women. Because those are the people whose rights have been taken away. And we can't somehow pretend, 'Oh, let's talk about the human race,' and make things all wishy washy. No, it's women. It has to be women. It has to be feminism. And you have to become one.

Maybe we should be that way about the First Gentleman also, and really critique the way they look all the time - their choice of tie, or their hairstyle, or whatever. Or maybe their weight.

This is tough trying to figure which one of these women is lying. One of them has to be. So the Lieutenant Governor is blond, and the mayor is brunette. Is that relevant in determining which one of them's telling the truth? I don't know. Just asking. The Lieutenant Governor seems a little bit more at home with makeup than the mayor. Is there anything to learn from that? I'm just asking.

[Wendy] Davis [pursued] higher education, as her campaign website says, with ‘the help of academic scholarships, student loans, and state and federal grants.’ Now that she is in a high-profile and hotly partisan race, it has come out that she also benefited from the moral and financial support of her second - now ex - husband. In the process, though, behavior we would expect and hardly notice in a man is being portrayed as freakish and problematic in a woman.

With its strenuously chummy hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, its saccharine bordering-on-absurd acceptance speeches, and its deluge of tearjerking “inspirational” commercials that sought to forge a hitherto unsuspected link between Golden Globes and Humanity’s
Greatest Achievements, the night was a deep dive into a pool of estrogen.

Putting women’s traditional needs at the center of social planning is not reverse sexism. It’s the best way to reverse the increasing economic vulnerability of men and women alike.

To those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films with women at the center are niche experiences, they are not. Audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money. So the world is round, people!

If we truly want gender equality, we need to challenge the assumption that more is always better, and the assumption that men don’t suffer as much as women when they’re exhausted and have no time for family or fun. And we need to challenge those assumptions wherever we find them, both in the workplace and in the family. Whether it’s one more meeting, one more memo, one more conference, one more play date, one more soccer game, or one more flute lesson for the kids, sometimes we need to say, ‘Enough!

In an interview, former vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan said he does not have a racist bone in his body. However, he admitted he has three sexist bones and his spine is homophobic.

I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.