RSS

Jaclyn Friedman

Jaclyn Friedman is author of What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl's Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety, and editor of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape. She is executive director of Women, Action & the Media, and a charter member of CounterQuo, a coalition dedicated to challenging the ways we respond to sexual violence. 

Recent Articles

Yet Another Thing Guns Can't Solve

Jaclyn FriedmanMar 01, 2013
Flickr/ Texas Lightbox

The GOP is worried about women’s safety on campus. Or at least that’s what they’d have you believe of late, howling in protest at Colorado state Democratic representative Joe Salazar’s clumsy remarks about callboxes, and calling out the University of Colorado for teaching young women to vomit, pee, or tell an assailant they have their period in order to avoid rape. 

It’s Time for Some Israel Real Talk.

I’ll start.

Jaclyn FriedmanFeb 20, 2013
flickr/jason_harman

Last week, the storied New York LGBT Center refused award-winning queer writer and activist Sarah Schulman a chance to read from her new book, Israel/Palestine and the Queer International. In doing so, the organization cited the Center’s “moratorium” on using the center to "organize around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” in place since early 2011 purportedly to maintain the Center as a "safe space" for both Jews and Arabs. On Monday, they relaxed the moratorium, though it remains unclear whether Schulman will be allowed to read.

First Ladies in Waiting

Jaclyn FriedmanOct 24, 2012
(Flickr/Gage Skidmore, Barack Obama for America)

Sure, it's fun to hate her. She's a dance mom to a high-priced horse. She crowed about her “real marriage” to Mitt during her RNC speech, which would count as a homophobic dog whistle if it weren’t loud enough for everyone to hear. She wears thousand-dollar t-shirts and still manages to dress like a modern-day June Cleaver. And this Fall she's taken to saying bafflingly tone-deaf things to reporters, like that she has “concern” for her husband’s “mental well-being” should he actually have to serve as president.

But all snark aside, why should we care about Ann Romney? The answers may seem obvious: If her husband is elected, she'll surely have the ear of the President of the United States in ways most cabinet members only dream of. She provides a window into a strange and often inscrutable candidate. And of course, the campaign has designated her a surrogate, so who are we to argue?

But none of these answers stand up to scrutiny. Governors and Senators often have wives who surely influence them in myriad ways. As for giving us insight into the candidate, what exactly do we learn from Ann Romney about Mitt, except that he seems capable of human emotion toward her, and that neither one of them is in possession of a particularly fine-tuned political ear?

The Vagina Myth

Naomi Wolf's yoni worship isn't just silly—it's dangerous.

Jaclyn FriedmanSep 11, 2012

This summer, Michigan state representative Lisa Brown was banned from the House floor when she dared to say the word “vagina” in a debate about proposed restrictions on abortion. Just three weeks ago, Todd Akin revealed what many Republicans believe: If you get pregnant, it can’t have been rape. It’s been a year of politicians trying to force women to have medically unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds, and “personhood amendments” granting one-celled organisms more rights than women, as long as the cell resides in the woman’s uterus. If there ever were a cultural moment crying out for an impassioned defense of the vagina, it would be now. It’s beyond unfortunate, then, that Naomi Wolf’s new book Vagina: A Biography is such a failure.

A Farewell and Friday Roundup

Jaclyn FriedmanMay 18, 2012

This being Friday, seems like the way to wrap up this week's series on ending rape in conflict is with a good old-fashioned link round-up. Before we get into the clicking, a huge thanks to E.J. Graff and the Prospect for hosting me this week, and to all of you for reading.

For the first of two rounds of links, and to give you a sense of the movement that's already underway, let's focus on recent actions happening in the four focus countries of the campaign:

Pages