Happy almost Valentine’s Day, my lovelies!

How many of you are planning to spend this Saturday with your wonderful, Cupid-bestowed, significant others?

Awesome. All of the single people want to punch you lovebirds in the face.

But, despite the wave of existential dread this holiday brings to single people everywhere (#foreveralone, am I right?), SCOTUS seems to be in a weirdly lovey mood. In what can only be interpreted as an early Valentine’s Day gift to coupled-up gay people nationwide, SCOTUS dropped a solid hint on Monday that it’ll be making gay marriage a nationwide reality soon.

Early Monday morning, SCOTUS refused to extend the stay on a lower court’s decision that declared Alabama’s ban on gay marriages unconstitutional. Basically, that means that SCOTUS is allowing gay marriages to happen in Alabama right now, despite the fact that the constitutionality of state-level gay marriage bans isn’t on deck to be decided upon until later this summer.

Folks, this is a big fucking deal for gay marriage.

The validity of state-level gay marriage bans are currently under SCOTUS’ consideration, and it’s uncertain which way the court will rule. Will SCOTUS decide that individual states totally have the right to ban gay marriage? Will it decide that that’s bullshit, and all of the states have to allow marriages of all people, regardless of the couple’s gender pairing?

Basically, until this summer, the answer on that is TBD.

With that understanding, SCOTUS could do well to allow states that currently have gay marriage bans to continue on with their marriage banning. If these states were forced to allow gay marriages during this current limbo period—and if SCOTUS ultimately decided that state level marriage bans were A-OK—then a whole mess of married couples would suddenly find themselves in a legal quagmire.

So, why create all that mess? It would make more sense to wait until the decision is final, and then marriages can proceed or not, depending on the official decree.

But that’s the opposite of what SCOTUS did on Monday morning!

The justices ruled, without further comment, that the federal district court in Alabama’s ruling could go forth, allowing thousands of gay couples in the state to get married.

Why would SCOTUS do that if it was planning to uphold the constitutionality of gay marriage bans this summer?

Monday’s decision strongly suggests that, come summertime, SCOTUS will rule that state-level gay marriage bans are unconstitutional, and unfettered gay marriage will reign throughout the land.

I’m really hoping that decision comes through in time for Gay Pride. Can you imagine the parties? GOOD LORD. I’m already excited.

For marriage equality advocates across the nation, SCOTUS’ decision Monday morning comes as a welcome victory. Gays in Alabama are happily marrying, and most likely, all of the gays in all of the states will be able to follow suit very soon.

Hurray for all the gay couples who want to get married, for lots of totally valid reasons! Tax benefits, inheritance, hospital visitation rights, health insurance sharing, co-parenting and custody benefits, and citizen sponsorship are just a few of the myriad benefits that legal marriage affords to couples. Signing your name on that dotted line is a huge deal for a lot of people, and it’s a right that tons of people—many of whom I personally know and love—are fighting really hard to secure.

However.

Let’s not forget that marriage is a discriminatory and problematic institution. It’s not the magical cure-all for the LGBT community’s marginalization and disenfranchisement. It’s not even the most pressing issue on our list of things to fix, despite what organizations like the HRC and Lambda Legal might have you believe.

Violence, poverty, unemployment, criminalization, and homelessness are all issues that are—or should be—more highly prioritized on the docket of LGBT issues than gay marriage. Because let’s face it—while well-to-do gay couples are busy planning their weddings, queer youth of color are dying in the streets.

Literally. I’m not exaggerating. Nearly half of the homeless population is comprised of LGBT kids. Trans women of color are getting murdered left and right. This shit is real.

So, while I’m totally enthused about SCOTUS’ hat tip this week in favor of the gay marriage fight, I’m not waving the rainbow flag of victory just yet. No matter which way their final decision goes this summer, we’ll still have a lot more work to do before the queer community can live safely and equitably in American society.

So Happy Valentine’s Day, lovelies! You might be able to get married soon. And then, after your wedding bells have died down, we’ll all have to keep working towards real justice.

Hannah R. Winsten

Hannah R. Winsten is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York’s sixth borough. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow. Contact Hannah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Happy Valentine’s Day! Gay Weddings May Soon Be Sanctioned by SCOTUS appeared first on Law Street.

Folks, how many of you are John Green fans? I hope every single one of you raised your hand. He’s basically perfection.

Not only does he write awesome books, but he also posts weekly vlogs on YouTube with his brother, Hank. The two of them cover everything from goofy details about their daily lives to politics and religion. And they do it HYSTERICALLY. Seriously, I never knew I could be so entertained while watching a video about the American healthcare system.

Anyway! One of John Green’s wonderful books, The Fault in Our Stars, has been made into a feature film. It’s hitting theaters next month and stars Shailene Woodley.

So much gorgeousness is happening here, you guys.

Shailene is pretty awesome, making some queer-ish, feminist-y comments about love being independent from gender, doubting our society’s obsession with marriage and monogamy, coming down on Twilight for promoting an unhealthy and abusive relationship dynamic, and advocating for more nuanced, kickass roles for women in movies.

She’s pretty rad.

But! Shailene was recently asked if she identifies as a feminist. And she said no. Cue collective exasperated sigh of disappointment.

Why is this apparently feminist star eschewing the feminist label? Because, it seems, she doesn’t actually understand what being a feminist means.

“No,” said Woodley, when asked if she considered herself a feminist, “because I love men.” She went on to say that feminism means giving undue power to women at the expense of men, an arrangement that wouldn’t be beneficial to anyone.

But, see, that’s not what feminism is. That’s not what it means. Not even a little bit. Feminists aren’t power hungry man-haters looking to depose men from their porcelain thrones of fragile masculinity. We’re not looking to climb over the men, flip the oppression coin, and unfairly win some sort of gender pissing contest where vagina-bearers come out on top.

Feminists are people who come in all shapes, sizes, and genders — some of them are men, go figure! — who believe in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. Just ask Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the TEDx talker who came up with this perfectly coined definition of feminism. This isn’t power grabbing. This isn’t renewed, rearranged sexism.

Feminism is a commitment to ending gender-based oppression. And that’s something that both men and women will benefit from.

Because, let’s be real. We live in a world where gender-based oppression is a huge fucking deal. There’s so much of it, in fact, that every week I’m swamped with potential stories to cover here on The F Word. My email inbox is consistently flooded with article recommendations from friends, family members, and coworkers, all alerting me to the latest crazy incident of racist, sexist, homophobic bullshit to hit the airwaves. There’s always too much to cover on any given day.

This week, for example, we’ve got Monica Lewinsky. Vanity Fair has debuted an exclusive essay by Lewinsky, breaking her decade-long silence regarding her past as the White House whore. “It’s time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress,” she writes, going on to express her deep regret and remorse for her affair with former President Bill Clinton — which, she insists, was totally consensual.

But does consent really exist between an intern in her early 20s and her boss — a man who’s not only twice her age, but who’s also the President of the United States? The leader of the motherfucking free world asks you for a blow job, and what do you do? Report him to human resources?

I feel like the U.S. military’s Commander in Chief probably pulls rank on that one, no?

Yes, yes he does.

We live in a world where the man who abused his position of power to score sex from a hot, 20-something staffer, is now getting paid millions of dollars in speaking engagements. Meanwhile, his well-educated, exceptionally capable whore has been unable to land a full-time job ever, AT ALL, because of her “history,” a media sensation that’s transformed her from a person into a joke.

This is a world that needs feminism.

Then, we’ve got Emily Letts, an abortion counselor at a clinic in New Jersey who filmed her surgical abortion and posted it online, to show other women that “there is such a thing as a positive abortion story.”

The short video, featured below, is not graphic or violent, shows only the top half of Letts’ body, and focuses on her emotional and physical experience during the procedure. As a counselor, Letts wanted to share her experience to diffuse some of the frightening misinformation surrounding abortions, modeling one possible solution to a very personal, complicated situation.

Letts’ video and her accompanying essay for Cosmopolitan are helping women across the country come to safe, informed decisions about how to handle an unexpected pregnancy. They’re also helping to chip away at the deeply ingrained stigma our country holds against women who take control of their bodies and reproductive systems.

We live in a world where those are two goals that cause a huge chunk of the United States to respond with anger and vitriol, calling Letts a Godless Baby Slaughterer Witch from Hell. I give it about five minutes before death threats start rolling in.

This is a world that needs feminism.

And then, we’ve got 300 girls in the Nigerian village of Chibok who were abducted from school, OF ALL PLACES, and are now being sold into sexual, marital slavery for a few dollars a pop by Boko Haram, an Islamist fundamentalist group.

#Malala stands in solidarity with Nigerians & people everywhere calling for action to #BringBackOurGirls pic.twitter.com/woAjreav0W

— Malala Fund (@MalalaFund) May 4, 2014

These girls, who range in age from 9 to 15 years old, haven’t been found, which is SHOCKING considering how little media or political attention their abductions have warranted. (Please re-read that sentence and multiply the sarcasm factor by infinity.) And why were they abducted? Because Boko Haram is opposed to women in Nigeria receiving Western educations.

That’s right, folks. We live in a world where girls are violently denied educations and sold into slavery — all while making fewer headlines than Kimye.

This world needs feminism so badly that I have to come up with creative ways to squeeze multiple stories into a single blog post — and I never manage to cover them all. It needs feminism so badly that I had an entire post written about this racist, sexist,  douchebag extraordinaire from Princeton who’s not apologizing for his white privilege, and I SCRAPPED it, because there were too many other stories that were even more important to cover this week.

So, to Shailene Woodley, and to all the other people in the world who are hesitant or unwilling to adopt the feminist identity, please listen.

Feminism is not man-hating. Feminism is not power-grabbing. Feminism is not dangerous, destructive, or harmful.

Feminism is empathy. Feminism is self-love, and love for your fellow human beings. Feminism is working to end the oppression of all people — men, women, queers, people of color, poor people, disabled people — so that all of us can live happier, healthier lives.

Being a feminist means that you believe in social, political, and economic equality between the sexes. Being a feminist means you believe in ending oppression.

And sadly, this column is proof that there aren’t enough of us.

So, please, get next to feminism. Feminists are changing the world for the better. And we need you.

—

Hannah R. Winsten (@HannahRWinsten) is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York City. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow.

Featured image courtesy of [Mingle MediaTV via Flickr]

Hannah R. Winsten

Hannah R. Winsten is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York’s sixth borough. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow. Contact Hannah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post An Open Letter to Shailene Woodley: What Every Not-a-Feminist Needs to Hear appeared first on Law Street.

This afternoon, publisher Elsevier Science won the R.R. Hawkins Award at the American Association of Publishers’ PROSE Awards, winning the top prize in the professional and scholarly publishing industry. Elsevier was honored for its work publishing the recent book, Alan Turing: His Work and Impact.

Folks, how many of you even know who Alan Turing is? Probably not a lot of you, unless you were serious math and science nerds during college.

So! I’ll catch you up. Born in 1912, Turing grew up in London and was one of those kids who’s just crazy smart. The kind of smart that makes you never want to read again, because OMG you could never measure up. He was such a talented math student that he skipped elementary calculus, and went straight to coming up with Einstein’s same ideas on his own by age 16.

Did you ever see Good Will Hunting? Alan Turing is basically Matt Damon. Yes. That guy.

But, since Turing didn’t endure childhood abuse and neglect like Will Hunting, he didn’t go on to become an under-achiever with anger problems. Instead, he turned out fabulously — he went on to become one of the most important mathematicians in history.

He came up with the idea to feed machines algorithms. He broke the German Enigma codes in World War II. He invented the CAPTCHA test. So, basically — that scene in The Social Network where the Facebook algorithm finds itself on the window of Zuck’s dorm room? That would be thanks to Turing. The Allied Powers defeating Hitler’s Nazi Germany in World War II? You can thank Turing for that, too. The computer you’re reading this post on right now? Also courtesy of Turing.

Considering none of us can remember how to survive without computers and the Internet, Alan Turing pretty much made our whole lives. So, it’s pretty weird that a guy this important isn’t actually way more famous than he is, right?

Right. But he’s not. Because he was gay.

Back when Turing was alive, homosexuality was a criminal offense in England. So, in 1952, when his home was burgled by an acquaintance of his lover, Turing found himself in some deep shit. During the investigation, he admitted to having a romantic and sexual relationship with his lover, and wound up being charged with a crime himself. Crap like this is why queer folks don’t trust the cops, you guys.

Anyway! Turing wound up being convicted of gross indecency, and in lieu of prison time, he was sentenced to chemical castration. For one year, Turing received injections of oestrogen, a synthetic female hormone. As a result, he became impotent and developed gynaecomastia — a fancy doctor word that means he started growing breasts. Not surprisingly, Turing lost his security access and his job.

Also unsurprisingly, Turing was not a happy guy during this whole ordeal. He was so unhappy, in fact, that he committed suicide just two years later. In 1954, Turing was found dead in his apartment, a half-eaten apple lying beside him. It’s suspected that he laced the apple with cyanide in a dark reenactment of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He was only 41.

Courtesy of Duncan Hill via Flickr.

In the years since his death, Turing’s legacy has been complicated. While his work lives on forever — providing the basis of all modern-day computer science — his name has been shrouded in shame-induced obscurity. His fame was revived in the early 2000s, when England batted around the idea of granting him a posthumous pardon for his “crimes,” something that didn’t officially happen until 2013.

So, when Elsevier published this book, celebrating Turing’s work and solidifying his place in history, it was a pretty big deal. They sent a message to the world that Alan Turing won’t be forgotten, despite his sexuality.

Courtesy of Bernt Rostad via Flickr.

Before now, Turing was something of a tragic figure. He was a ridiculously great thinker, an indispensable historical figure, a scientific visionary with one tragic flaw. He liked other men. And in this heteronormative, patriarchal, Puritanical, fucked up world, that was reason enough to banish him from the history books. To banish him from life, really. His final years on this planet were tortured ones, and his gross mistreatment at the hands of the law ultimately led to his suicide.

Turing wasn’t alone. Countless queers have been persecuted over the course of history, and we continue to face social and legal adversity today. In the United States, homosexuality was a criminal offense until 2003. That’s insane.

So, here’s the bottom line. It’s awesome that Elsevier published this book, and it’s super fabulous that the company was honored for it. You heard it here first.

But Turing’s not the only gay man who suffered at the hands of the law. He’s not the only queer person whose legacy was forced into obscurity. And he’s not the only queer whose life was cut tragically short.

So, let’s remember Alan Turing. But let’s not forget about the rest of our community—especially those of us who aren’t white, male, able-bodied, middle-class, and cisgender. We’re suffering too.

—

Featured image courtesy of [Tim Ellis via Flickr]

Hannah R. Winsten

Hannah R. Winsten is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York’s sixth borough. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow. Contact Hannah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post EXCLUSIVE: Alan Turing Honored at the PROSE Awards appeared first on Law Street.

Good afternoon folks! How many of you got a snow day today? Lucky bitches.

Anyway! Guess what we’re commemorating this month? Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, yes—but something else. Something a bit less, serious.

The premier of The L Word! Who here remembers that show? Please tell me some of you.

Well, for those of you who live under a rock, The L Word was a Showtime series that followed the lives and loves of a group of lesbian friends living in Los Angeles. It was the first TV show to feature more than one significant lesbian character, and to this day it’s the only show that ever depicted semi-realistic, super-hot lesbian sex.

Who were you 10 years ago? I was an angsty, almost-teenager who dated dumb boys while secretly crushing on older girls. I was goth, or punk, or something, and I was eschewing my dreams of being a writer to halfheartedly pursue my dreams of being a rock star.

It was a weird time.

But 10 years ago, I didn’t have Showtime. I had never heard of The L Word. Netflix was barely a thing. And had my parents walked in on me watching the queer, soft-core porn that is The L Word’s claim to fame, they probably would have sent me away to an all-girls Catholic boarding school. (Kind of a weird disciplinary solution for a Jewish, budding dyke — but that was their go-to threat, nonetheless.)

I didn’t meet the cast of The L Word for another few years, when my first serious girlfriend and I binge-watched most of the series while she was recovering from surgery. Despite the show’s obvious problems — it was depressingly white-washed, hopelessly femme, and wildly unrealistic — I was totally hooked. It was the first time I’d ever seen anything remotely similar to my life up on the screen. And it was hot.

So here we are, a decade later, and everything’s different. I’m a grown-ass woman, with a job and an apartment and a life that’s complicated as fuck. The L Word’s long gone, and it’s been semi-replaced with Orange is the New Black — which is way queerer and more diverse, if slightly less X-rated. Queer characters are gracing the small screen left and right, from Modern Family to The Fosters. Things are good.

But are they really? Because life imitates art. And things are still pretty rough out here.

Poverty and homelessness are still a major problem for queer folks. We’re still met with devastating violence on the streets, and rejection from our families. We’re still faced with higher rates of unemployment, depression, and addiction. We’re still getting deported. We still don’t have health insurance.

Seriously. It’s rough out here.

And we’re not the only ones who feel it. Inequality is at an all-time high, leaving more people out in the cold than ever before. Things are difficult for most of us, regardless of sexuality. But for many, queerness makes it worse.

So, when I look back at The L Word and the world it premiered into 10 years ago, I like to think about how far we’ve come. It’s awesome that dykes on screen aren’t groundbreaking anymore. It’s fabulous that somewhere, someone, somehow, got the funding to represent us — even if it was a limited and problematic representation.

But it’s important to remember how far we have left to go. Just six months before The L Word hit Showtime, the Supreme Court issued a decision on the case Lawrence v. Texas, decriminalizing homosexuality in the United States.

That’s right.

Just six months before the gayest of gay girl shows premiered, queerness was criminal.

And today, a decade later, queers are still grossly underrepresented in the media, while we’re grossly over-represented in the prison population.

How much has really changed? It’s debatable, for sure.

So this month, head on over to Netflix and binge watch The L Word. Get hooked on the melodramatic awfulness and the inhumanly hot sex scenes.

But also remember that queerness is more than a glammed out TV show. And we still have a long-ass way to go.

—

Hannah R. Winsten (@HannahRWinsten) is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York’s sixth borough. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow.

Featured image courtesy of [kyle rw via Flickr]

Hannah R. Winsten

Hannah R. Winsten is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York’s sixth borough. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow. Contact Hannah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The First Time Lesbians Were Legal (on TV) appeared first on Law Street.

Good morning, lovelies. Did you all survive Thanksgiving? How many of you are still battling tryptophan-induced comas?

I know I am!

But all the Thanksgiving gluttony in the world couldn’t hold me back from you all. Nope. And I’ve got some worrying news to open your re-entrance into the world of normal portion sizes and stuffing withdrawal.

2016 is going to be a bitch.

Why? Well, because of a little “nuclear” reactor that was detonated just in time for my turkey to come out of the oven.

It did not look like this.

One week before Thanksgiving, Senator Harry Reid rallied together enough votes in the Senate to eliminate the minority party’s ability to filibuster executive branch nominees and any judgeship below the Supreme Court. What does that mean? Sen. Reid and the majority of his fellow Senators told the GOP to shut the fuck up and stop throwing tantrums already. Who can get anything done with these filibuster-happy, crazy people running around, making medically inadvisable speeches for gazillions of hours?

But actually. Filibustering hinders productivity. FACT.

Also fact: filibustering is sometimes necessary. If the majority party is set on passing some super fucked up legislation, the opposing side has to have some way to stand up and call bullshit. But here’s the problem with these two indisputable facts. Since President Obama was first elected in 2008, the Republicans have been abusing the filibuster.

Literally abusing it. Like, if the filibuster were a person, the GOP would be collectively doing time for assault and battery right now. So, Sen. Reid took the initiative. He got his fellow Senators together, and they stood up to the obnoxious, filibuster-abusing Republicans. And now they can’t filibuster anymore. Yay!

Except that the filibuster ban goes both ways. So, if the Republicans regain control of the Senate in the upcoming 2016 elections, we are in for a SHIT TON of trouble. Now, when I say we, who am I referring to exactly?

Women, queers, people of color, poor people, immigrants, scientists, people who believe in the separation of Church and State, people who believe in reality. A lot of us, shall we say.

How come? Well that’s not hard to figure out. The Christian Right has made it abundantly clear that they’re out for blood. In a perfect world, they’d like to slash women’s access to safe abortions, slash access to healthcare for everyone but the obscenely wealthy, while turning a blind eye to racism, sexism, classism, global warming, and everything else that they’d like to pretend doesn’t exist. They’re also down for warmongering, merging Church and State, and basically turning the U.S. into an even bigger shit show than it already is.

We’re talking about a tyrannical theocracy.

As a lesbian, feminist writer who earns a portion of her living criticizing the government, I would really appreciate this not happening. I don’t want to live in a tyrannical theocracy. No thank you! But, with the demise of the ability to filibuster, come 2016, we could potentially go there.

Now, before we get too crazy, let’s look at the facts for a second. Sen. Reid’s “nuclear” decision didn’t ban all filibusters, everywhere, all the time. Only the ones that revolve around presidential nominees for executive or non-Supreme Court judicial positions. There’s still plenty of room to filibuster on both sides. For example, Ted Cruz’s filibuster of the Affordable Care Act would still be admissible. However, without the ability to filibuster presidential nominees, Congress’s majority party can potentially stack the courts with judges that align with their platform.

If 2016 brings a Republican majority, that means court-stacking à la Justice Antonin Scalia. This is the same guy who claimed that the separation of Church and State is a myth. That’s not a happy prospect. Justices like Hon. Scalia would strip women, queers, people of color, poor people, immigrants, and non-Christians of their rights in a hot second, given the opportunity. And most of the folks on that list don’t have a ton of legal rights to begin with. As my immigrant, Polish, Jewish grandmother would say, oy vey.

But, since we have checks and balances, this is not the end of the world, right? The courts don’t rule the land with an iron fist. The judicial branch is just one arm in a complex tree of government. We’ve still got the legislative branch and the executive branch to even everything out.

Well, sort of. If the legislative and judicial branches are in each other’s pockets, there won’t be much checking or balancing going on there. The same can be said of the executive branch, which will also be up for grabs come 2016. Imagine a Christian Right president, elected alongside a conservative congressional majority, who will both work together to nominate conservative judiciaries.

It’s one possible outcome of 2016 elections, and it’s one where the whole checks and balances thing kind of becomes moot. Not to mention, even in a less-extreme situation, a highly conservative court hinders the legislative and executive branches’ abilities to make lasting reforms.

So, what have we learned about 2016?

Basically, that Sen. Reid’s decision to go nuclear prior to Turkey Day this year could have some serious consequences if the next election swings Right. So let’s jump on that Lefty-loosey bandwagon, mmkay? Keep those neocons at bay!

Featured image courtesy of [Center for American Progress Action Fund via Flickr]

Hannah R. Winsten

Hannah R. Winsten is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York’s sixth borough. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow. Contact Hannah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Will We Live in a Tyrannical Theocracy by 2016? appeared first on Law Street.