Dear Meteor readers,

Dare I say it? I’m feeling pretty good this week. I’ve been deeply entrenched in two docuseries and it’s proven to be a welcome hours-long break from reality. If you’re looking to fill time before the next catastrophe, I highly suggest Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey (about Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) on Netflix or if you’re staying away from crime docs, ESPN’s latest 30 For 30 installment, Dream On, which covers the creation of the 1996 U.S. Olympic women’s basketball team.

We’ve got a busy weekend ahead of us with Father’s Day and Juneteenth. In commemoration of the latter, Meteor editor-at-large Rebecca Carroll asked six brilliant Black women their take on the holiday—from its significance to the pitfalls of commercialization. We’ve even got the official unofficial playlist for the day.

But first, some news.

In joy and freedom,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

Baby got vax: Fantastic news for the toddler set—the FDA has approved Covid-19 vaccines for children under five, just in time for summer vacation. Both Pfizer and Moderna shots have been deemed safe (sorry Johnson & Johnson, you don’t get a final rose) and doses will start finding their way into chunky baby arms beginning June 20th, the Biden administration said in a statement. Considering the lack of mask mandates and the decreased chatter about variants, we may act as if the virus is no longer a threat, but COVID and her horrid stepchildren Delta and Omicron are still very much among us and who knows when they’ll be inviting their distant cousin Epsilon over to party. Be well, bbs!

Iowa 👎🏼: On Friday, Iowa’s Supreme Court took an enormous step backward and declared that abortion is not a protected right under the state’s constitution, just as the country is on pins and needles waiting for the Dobbs decision. This move overturns a previous court’s decision that abortion was protected under the privacy rights laid out in the Iowa constitution. What’s changed since the last decision? The new Iowa court is filled to the brim with conservative Republican judges hell-bent on limiting the freedoms of their citizens. What do we do when Republicans try to block our rights? We donate to the Iowa Abortion Access Fund.

AND:

• Braxton Brewington of the Debt Collective argues Black Americans are still waiting for “a real age of emancipation” and that Juneteenth falls short of the promises of its predecessor “Jubilee Day.”

• Larry Nassar has lost his final appeal. Good riddance is all I’ll say.

• The British government has signed off on extradition paperwork for Julian Assange, who can now legally be brought back to the U.S to stand trial for an earth-shattering data leak that most of us no longer remember. (We do remember his rape charges, though.)

• Michelle Goldberg talked to our own Samhita and other feminists about the state of mainstream feminism in The New York Times. Is it cool or is it not cool? Maybe it doesn’t need to be cool.

• Stephanie McMahon has been named interim CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment and maybe that seems unimportant but there is some real Succession shit going on in that company right now and Stephanie is a more cunning Shiv Roy.

• In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Title IX, enjoy these five shorts about incredible women in sports, including the queen Sedona Prince who exposed the wild inequalities in NCAA basketball.

• Beyoncé. That’s it. That’s the news.

SAY IT LOUD

Six Black Women on the Meaning of Juneteenth

Its history, its future, and yes, that dumb ice cream

BY REBECCA CARROLL

A JUNETEENTH REPARATIONS RALLY HELD IN NEWARK, 2022 (PHOTO BY MICHAEL M. SANTIAGO VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

Leave it to Texas to pretend they didn’t hear that slavery was over. While the Emancipation Proclamation was passed in 1863, the then-still border state of Texas was like, “What? No, uh-uh. We don’t know her.” On June 19, 1865, though, Union troops arrived in Galveston to take control of the state and make sure that all enslaved people were freed. That day became Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the official abolishment of slavery. A holiday for us—for Black folks.

One hundred and fifty years later it’s now a commercial holiday—used in brand campaigns and Walmart’s failed ice cream—and I feel ambivalent about that. What’s to prevent it from turning into another MLK Day or Black History Month, both of which feel more like lip service as opposed to an actual appreciation of what we’re meant to be commemorating? I mean, this is America: How can we trust the country built on the backs of Black folks—a country that continues to be as happy-pants racist as it wants to be—to honor the day we got free?

So, yes, I have questions and concerns about Juneteenth, but I also really wanted to find a way to commemorate it in a meaningful way. I decided to talk to a group of brilliant Black women—writers, creatives, and artists—to offer some perspective on the holiday.

First, about that commercialization. Do you think it has undermined the historical value of Juneteenth for Black folks in America? 

“Juneteenth will remain a significant holiday—because of its symbolic meaning and historical legacy—regardless of recent commercialization efforts. We live in a capitalist society, which means that we can almost always expect companies to exploit holidays—and just about anything—to yield a profit. Plus, it is certainly easier for companies to sell goods and services than to find concrete ways to redress past harms or address current discriminatory practices. Still, I am encouraged by the swift public response when companies go too far. It’s a reminder that we can play a key role in demanding better from those that drop the ball.”

–Dr. Keisha N. Blain, professor of Africana studies and history at Brown University 

What would be the best possible reason for the hashtag Juneteenth to go viral? 

“The best reason for #Juneteenth to go viral [would be] Black Americans actually receiving meaningful reparations for the enslavement of our ancestors, because we know that will not happen in 2022. The second best reason for #Juneteenth to go viral [would be] the announcement that the rich history of Black Americans since they were brought to these shores in bondage, will be taught in schools. No longer just a paragraph about Martin Luther King and how enslaved Africans were akin to migrant workers, all students would learn how we built this country. I don’t see that happening either, so how about #Juneteenth goes viral because all Black people get the Friday closest to June 19th off from work? Just us.”

–April Reign, equity and inclusion advocate, and creator of #OscarsSoWhite

REPARATIONS AND LAND!  (PHOTO BY MICHAEL M. SANTIAGO VIA GETTY IMAGES)

What is the single most important thing to get right about Juneteenth as a journalist?

“Journalists should speak of Juneteenth as an ‘is’ instead of a ‘was.’ It’s not a siloed moment of history. What it represents—the willfully delayed emancipation of Black people—speaks directly to this perilous time and the denial of our rights. It must also be framed within the context of anti-CRT/American history laws that will gut the significance of Juneteenth by erasing from libraries and classrooms the nearly 250 years of chattel slavery that preceded it.”

–Renée Graham, journalist and opinion columnist for the Boston Globe 

What’s funny about Juneteenth? 

“It’s ‘hilarious’ that we finally have a national holiday to celebrate our freedom, yet we’re still not truly free.”

–Yvette Nicole Brown, actress (Big Shot) and TV host

If you were making a playlist called Juneteenth, what 10 songs would be on it?  

Alright - Kendrick Lamar

A Chance to Say My Piece - Taylor McFerrin

Formation - Beyoncé

This Is America - Childish Gambino

My People…Hold On - Eddie Kendricks

Can You See? - Madison McFerrin

Every Nigga Is a Star - KeiyaA

Say It Loud - I’m Black and I'm Proud - James Brown

Post Black Anyway - THEESatisfaction

Baltimore - Nina Simone

–Madison McFerrin, singer/songwriter

IT'S SCIENTIFICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO CREATE A PLAYLIST THAT DOESN'T INCLUDE KENDRICK LAMAR (PHOTO BY SANTIAGO BLUEGUERMAN VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Why is Juneteenth important to you as a mother? 

“Black history is American history. But in our house, what I tell my daughter is that Black history is also a master class in hope. To me, Juneteenth matters because it says: ‘Keep going, the future you want is coming.’”

–Veronica Chambers, editor of narrative projects at The New York Times, and author of Shirley Chisholm is a Verb

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Dear Meteor readers,

I hope you are well. I am trying to keep calm while we wait for the SCOTUS to make decisions.  I am distracting myself with the things that are good: my cats, the sunshine, and all of you loyal and committed readers.

Today, my dear friend, writer, and professor Syreeta McFadden talks to award-winning journalist Linda Villarosa about her new book, Under the Skin, and what she’s learned in her years as a health reporter. It’s a really freakin’ good conversation.

But first, the news.

It’s dark and hell is hot,

Samhita Mukhopadhyay

WHAT'S GOING ON

Labor woes: Employees at various Starbucks locations are working to unionize and the company’s overlords are pushing back by threatening to limit access to healthcare for trans employees. According to Them, workers have filed a charge against Starbucks with the National Labor Relations Board for creating a “coercive and hostile environment” including threatening the loss of gender-affirming health benefits if they vote for union representation. (Starbucks did not respond to the charge but their stance on the matter is made clear on their union-busting website.) You know what we’re not going to do in the month that we celebrate our Lord and savior Marsha P. Johnson? Remain idle while workers, trans or otherwise, are stripped of their rights. So until Starbucks comes around, consider putting your money into that local coffee shop instead of paying a small fortune for your non-dairy venti secret menu unicorn frappuccino with extra whip.

#BringBGHome:  WNBA star Brittney Griner’s wrongful detention in Russia has been extended once again to July 2. The Russian court system has moved Griner’s hearing, on the alleged charge of possessing cannabis paraphernalia, which means she will remain in the custody of Russian authorities where she has been held without due process for over 100 days. As a professor of military and strategic studies told ESPN, “Dragging out her detention, missing court deadlines–these are key indicators that we should question the legitimacy of her arrest, precisely why the U.S. classified it as a wrongful detention.” So why is President Biden—a man who claims to love women’s sports so much he practically adopted the USWNT—dragging his feet on this issue?

Party crashers: The Proud Boys and other far-right groups have been interrupting family-friendly drag events across the country during Pride month (which is painfully ironic considering their name is Proud Boys). One such event was a drag queen story time where Bay Area drag queen, Panda Dulce was reading story books to children. Imagine getting so enraged about story time that you pull up to a children’s event to yell? Get a life. Despite these ongoing expressions of hateration, Pride events are going forward thanks to the fearless queens who have been attending and the businesses that have been supporting them (like Rabble Rise Doughnuts in New Jersey who put on a WONDERFUL Drag Queens and Doughnuts event for families.)

AND:

• Google will be paying out a $118 million gender discrimination settlement to over 15,000 women who’ve been underpaid by the company. Sounds like a lot—but not when you divide amongst that many women (about $7,866 each!).

• WTF headline of the week: “White Nationalists Want to Reclaim Nature as a Safe Space for Racists.” Who’s going to tell them we’re all living on stolen land? I’d say my Taino ancestors are spinning in their graves but they weren’t given the dignity of burial so 🤷🏼‍♀️.

• Speaking of ancestors, the web browser of the pioneers, Internet Explorer, has been put out to pasture. She lived a good life.

• Am I the only one who didn’t know about the tampon shortage until just this week?

HEALTH REPORT

“Something* About Being Black Is  Creating a Health Crisis”

*It's racism! 

BY SYREETA MCFADDEN

YOU SEE THAT GLOW? IT'S THE SHINE OF INCREDIBLE KNOWLEDGE. (IMAGE VIA LINDA VILLAROSA.COM)

Linda Villarosa has been raising the alarm about African American health for nearly forty years. First, as a health reporter and editor for Essence Magazine in the late 1980s and ‘90s, and later in her book, Body & Soul: The Black Woman’s Guide to Physical Health and Emotional Well-Being. Her prolific reporting for The New York Times has examined the infant and maternal mortality in Black mothers and babies, racial disparities in both the HIV and COVID pandemics, and life expectancy in Black communities, namely her hometown of Chicago. Just this past weekend, she wrote the cover story for The New York Times Magazine about the grotesque, continuing practice of legalized forced sterilizations of poor Black and brown women.

Villarosa’s new book, Under The Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation, is out this week and is a culmination of decades of extensive reporting and research exploring racism in healthcare. Through profiles of Black women and men from different backgrounds, supplemented with extensive studies, Villarosa lays bare the forces that account for Black people living sicker and dying quicker than their white counterparts.

Her findings are profound. For example, regardless of education and income, Black Americans still live in more polluted areas, suffer more from chronic illnesses, and have higher death rates from conditions like diabetes, stroke, and heart disease than white people. College-educated Black mothers have higher infant mortality rates than white mothers who haven't graduated from high school.

“Yes, something about being Black is a creating a health crisis,” Villarosa writes, “and that something is racism.”

As I read Under The Skin, I had frequent flashbacks to my own experiences navigating health care and reading Villarosa’s articles in Essence when I was younger. (Her articles were so popular, she tells me, that people would Xerox and share them.) So I was thrilled to have the opportunity to talk to her.

ROUND OF APPLAUSE TO SEAN GERARD CLARK WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS GRIPPING COVER ART. (SCREENSHOT VIA INSTAGRAM)

Syreeta McFadden: In this book, you challenge dominant—as well as your own—assumptions about the root causes of racial health disparities. Why was it important for you to flip the gaze on yourself? And what did you discover that you had to unlearn?

Linda Villarosa: It’s been a real challenge because I’m an American, born and raised in a culture that teaches you that personal responsibility is everything. And that you, as an individual, are in charge of your own destiny, your own health, and your own wealth, without looking at the structural, institutional, and historical discrimination and racism that we as African Americans have faced.

My family was a bootstrapping kind of family. My grandparents came up from Mississippi [to Chicago], and my parents finally managed to dig their way out of [there]. I ended up at Essence magazine, where the thinking was if you empower each individual Black woman, who is usually in charge of a family, you can change the health of Black people. So it was if you know better, you do better kind of thinking. And I worked really hard to get as much information as I could to Essence readers. At the time, Essence had a huge reach among Black women.

[In 1991], I went to public health school, and I started learning that not everything is individual, there are health policies, and there’s the history of [racism in] America. And later, my own pregnancy, showed me I was doing everything right, [but it still] wasn’t that easy. It was much more fraught than I would have expected, given my insurance status, my health status, my income, and my education.

 I still believe that taking the best care of yourself is smart. But now I see that to achieve optimal health, we have to explore what has happened to us in America and the effect of living in a discriminatory or racist society.

In the book, you share a much more complete history of the origins of Dr. Arline Geronimus’s “weathering hypothesis.” 

Arline is probably 70ish [and has] been thinking about this theory of “weathering” since she was in college. The idea is that the discrimination we as Black people especially as Black women face has a weathering effect: which means it's prematurely aging our bodies. And it's the culmination of at minimum micro at worse macro aggressions. And she spelled it out for me and I really liked the poetry of the word weathering. Weathering is at once the effect of discrimination and everyday insults, as well as big picture insults on our bodies, like the way a storm weathers a house, it knocks the paint off the outside, it messes up the roof, it pulls the shutters off the hinges. But then we also as people weather the storm, and we have kinship and we have community and we have friends and we have spirituality. So I really liked that dual meaning of weathering.

There’s a chapter where you write about the medical community’s understanding and recognition of pain in Black bodies. Could you talk a little bit about that?

I really dug deep into that when I was working on my 1619 Project essay [which explored the dangerous fallacy of pain tolerance in Black people]. During the years of slavery, there were doctors and scientists who were also enslavers; they owned human beings and they had a vested interest in keeping slavery in place. And one of the ways they did it was to use science and “data”—to push the false idea that Black people have super high pain tolerance. So that allowed people to not feel bad when they worked us from sunup to sundown, beat us, whipped us, castrated us, took our children away, killed us—all the things that happened. And it desensitized people to our pain. If we have a superhuman tolerance to pain, then it was okay to treat us badly, and it was okay to also perform medical experiments on our bodies.

Slavery is over, but that idea is stuck in the American consciousness. Even as recently as 2016, there was a study of [about] 220 white medical students and interns, and they found that 40% had believed at least one false idea about Black people. And the most common one was that we had a higher tolerance for pain. In another [study], the question they asked was, if two people, one Black, and one white, got their hand slammed in a car door—what would the pain feeling be? And even these, you know, educated people who are the doctors of tomorrow said, oh, a Black person would feel that less. That was 2016.

In the book, and in The New York Times Magazine cover story, you write so movingly about the Relfs, two sisters in their teens who were forcibly sterilized in Montgomery, Alabama in 1973. Their case revealed that over 100,000 Black and brown women were sterilized by US government programs for decades, harm that has continued. 

The article grapples with how to deal with reparations for Black people—and it's not just Black people, it’s Latinx people, it's sometimes poor white people—who were sterilized against their will or without informed consent. There were eugenics laws on the books in 32 states [but] they went away in the 70s and the United States still kept sterilizing people in prisons, and immigrants. So if we're looking for a concrete way to [repay] people who were sterilized, reparations is a way to do it. Three states have done it: Virginia and North Carolina had programs to give reparations to people who were sterilized, and California is in the midst of it right now. People like the Relf sisters, who are alive [but] never got a dime for their sacrifice, deserve an apology. And they deserve some kind of financial payment for the sacrifice they made.

How do you hope this book will transform the conversation around racism and health?

I hope this book is a data-driven, research-based, evidence-based tool to help people understand, people who really have been trying to talk about it and don't have the tools. I don’t want people in the healthcare system to feel defensive—that I'm saying, you're racist—because I think we all have blind spots. Health care providers are heroes, but we still all have blind spots. And if we understand them and confront them as a country and in the healthcare system, that’s how we can make things different.

I also don’t want our folks to be afraid of the health care system. But I want us to go in with our eyes open—to go in with support, to go in with questions, to go in with, you know, knowing, and to gently push back. And if you can’t do it for yourself, bring someone with you.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Did you find this newsletter enlightening? Spread the love and the info by forwarding this email to a friend. 

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Dear Meteor readers,

Happy second Saturday of Pride! This week, I had the pleasure of attending a screening of the first two episodes of Ms. Marvel, the new series out on Disney+. Based on the comic book of the same name, the TV show stars the very charming Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan, a Pakistani-American superhero who gets her power from an ancient family heirloom bangle. I was hooked.

I’m not exactly a comic book nerd, but lucky for you my newsletter co-sherpa Shannon is, and she’s written a beautiful reflection on how it feels to watch the series as a Muslim and superhero obsessive. She talks to Meteor founding member Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who also happens to be one of the directors.

First, some news.

xoxo,

Samhita Mukhopadhyay

WHAT'S GOING ON

About those insurrectionists: It only took seven years, but Ivanka Trump has finally said something truthful. In recorded testimony played Thursday night for the Select Committee overseeing the January 6th hearings, Ivanka stated that, after the 2020 election, she had “accepted” Attorney General Bill Barr’s statement that there was “no sufficient evidence” to overturn her father’s loss. (Trump responded today by ranting that his favorite child simply did not know what she was talking about.) There was a time when people had hoped Ivanka would temper her father’s wrongdoings. This testimony makes clear: She knew full well his claims the election had been stolen were delusional; she just did nothing about it. People died, and we still don’t know what this means for the state of our democracy. But thanks for being honest, I guess.

AND:

• Britney Spears got married! But apparently, we still can’t leave her alone. Spears’s ex-husband Jason Alexander crashed her wedding and managed to film the entire thing. Why are men!?

• Travelers flying into the U.S. will no longer need to provide a negative Covid test before entering the country because along with Covid funding and free tests, America has run out of shits to give.

• A 24th, TWENTY-FOURTH, woman has filed a civil lawsuit against NFL star Deshaun Watson for sexual assault. And yet: Watson is still employed and will remain so, in line with the NFL’s policy not to punish players unless there is a criminal charge.

• Mercury is finally direct but is capitalism in retrograde? Liz Plank is on the hunt for the answer in this illuminating interview about whether all capitalism is as evil as we think.

• Politics reporter Felicia Sonmez was fired by the Washington Post, and the details are complicated. But it’s a big loss, as Sonmez—an assault survivor who sued the paper last year—was an important voice on everything from reproductive rights to local politics.

COSMIC

Kamala Khan on TV Is a Revelation  

...especially for all us Muslim nerds.

BY SHANNON MELERO

IMAN VELLANI, MY QUEEN, MY LEADER (PHOTO BY JON KOPALOFF VIA GETTY IMAGES)

In the first opening minutes of Ms. Marvel, the new series on Disney+, Kamala Khan (played by Iman Vellani) says, “Finally the moment everyone has been waiting for,” and although nothing had actually happened yet, I teared up. I’ve been waiting for an on-screen version of Kamala—a scrappy young Muslim Jersey girl who discovers she has superpowers—since May 2014 when I walked into Midtown Comics and purchased the first issue.

That first “Ms. Marvel”—written by G. Willow Wilson, with art by Adrian Alphona and Ian Herring—followed the early hero days of 16-year-old Pakistani-American Kamala Khan as she works her way up to be the new Ms. Marvel, a title formerly held by Carol Danvers (before her promotion to Captain Marvel).

Finally, I thought, a Muslim hero who wasn’t going to get stuck in an outdated trope where her religion or ethnic background would be the only defining quality of her character (like Dust, a little-known member of the X-Men universe who hails from Afghanistan and wears niqab and whose superpower is turning into sand). From the beginning, Kamala was something more, a three-dimensional teenager who also happened to be Muslim.

My initial excitement paid off immediately—the very first panel of “Ms. Marvel #1” is an absolutely delightful scene where Kamala and her friends are at a corner store and she’s bent over a sandwich display lusting after a BLT. As a young Muslim woman, I too stare longingly at pieces of pork. (What I wouldn’t do for a guilt-free bite of crispy fried pork salami). It was that moment of connection, that playful wink and nod to a widely shared Muslim experience, that made me a fan.

WHEN I SAY I'VE BEEN WITH THIS GAL SINCE DAY ONE I REALLY MEAN IT (PHOTO BY SHANNON MELERO)

And the series premiere is everything I could have hoped for. It is visually stunning, a testament to the artwork that made the comics stand out on the shelf. It’s lighthearted and funny and is about so much more than a journey to superherodom: there’s intergenerational family dynamics, a burgeoning crush situation, dad jokes, teen shenanigans and homage to the unique weirdness that is living in Jersey City.

Kamala lives in a world of fantasy—she is a visual artist, makes costumes, and edits videos of Captain Marvel’s adventures for Youtube. She daydreams about winning a cosplay contest with her creations. She is a diehard Captain Marvel fan—which, same!—and she’s marked not just by her nerdiness but by the fact that she’s Pakistani in a school brimming with white kids. At one point, after Kamala is caught sneaking out of her house, the episode culminates in a confrontation with her mother, Muneeba (Zenobia Shroff) asking her daughter, “Do you want to be who we raised you to be…or do you want to to be this cosmic head-in-the-clouds person?”

With a huge grin, Kamala answers, “Cosmic.”

I screamed. That brief exchange was, for me, the essence of what Kamala represents. When you’re a Muslim person, your religion is often the only identifier people remember. But Kamala is so beautifully multi-faceted and unfettered by a single part of her life.

Choosing to live in fantasy or pursuing creativity isn’t something that children of color or children of immigrants often get to do. When your parents uprooted everything to give you a better life—it’s generally frowned upon to follow your “cosmic” urges. I’ve always wanted to become a writer, but the first thing my mom asked when I told her was, “How will you make money?”

ALL HAIL, ALL HAIL (PHOTO COURTESY OF MARVEL STUDIOS) ©Marvel Studios 2022. All Rights Reserved

But how can we not pursue our fantasies when we are the very product of our parents’ dreams for bigger and better? That is the question Kamala is answering, and she does so with incredible flair. Finally seeing her on-screen was so meaningful: So few women of color, fictional or otherwise, get to bask in a fantasy of their own making and take joy from it.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, the Oscar-winning documentarian who directs the fourth and fifth episodes of Ms. Marvel, says it best, “I have told stories of ordinary women who do extraordinary things for the better part of two decades…they are superheroes without capes. Ms. Marvel is an extension of that work. Her story will resonate with millions around the world who will see a reflection of their families and themselves in her. The birth of Kamala Khan onscreen is historic—it shows that anyone can be a superhero.”

Critics often turn their noses up at the superhero genre. But what creators like Jack Kirby and Stan Lee is no different than what Homer did. It’s all myth. It’s all an examination of the human ethos, of humankind’s struggle with itself, and of the fight between good and evil. But this time around the Pakistani-American girl from New Jersey gets to be the hero.

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Dear Meteor readers,

Like me, you’ve probably been completely fixated on Lori Harvey and Michael B. Jordan breaking up. (Oh, no? Just me?) They were just so beautiful!

The fan reactions have been WILD (short version, since it’s clear you haven't been following: Harvey chose herself), but fundamentally, the whole thing is none of my business, and neither is the fact that Feminist Icon Keanu Reeves was seen holding hands with his girlfriend this week, which feels like a satisfying incident of gender justice.

At any rate, celebrity stories are meant to be an escape from political life as we know it, which is yet another reason the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial was such a bummer. It inspired an orgy of hate against Heard, and in this issue, Meteor editor-at-large Rebecca Carroll sat down with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, scholar, and activist Salamishah Tillet to understand what it all meant—for the legal system and for survivors.

But, first, the news.

🥰,

Samhita Mukhopadhyay

WHAT'S GOING ON

“We were betrayed”: Justice for the victims of former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State doctor Larry Nassar has been elusive. Over 90 of them are now suing the FBI for mishandling the investigation into Nassar, which resulted in him continuing to abuse young women for months after a first victim had come forward. Listed among the plaintiffs are gold medalists Alexandra Raisman, Simone Biles, and McKayla Maroney; the lawsuit, which calls for a total of about $1 billion in damages, comes after the DOJ failed to prosecute the FBI for the agency’s “gross failure” to properly investigate Nassar. I for one cannot wait until this army of extremely athletic women (metaphorically) beats the FBI into such submission that they have to change the name of the J. Edgar Hoover Building to the All the Girls You Couldn't Silence Building.

Tits out for abortion: On Tuesday night the WNBA’s New York Liberty absolutely shellacked the Minnesota Lynx in Brooklyn. But not before a group of topless women stormed the court (which is very dangerous to players and officials btw!) to advocate for abortion rights. Some of the protestors, who were apparently with Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, ran on the court topless, while more unfurled a large green banner that read, “Overturn Roe? Hell no!” The on-court protestors were removed by security and in response, the organization tweeted, in part, “We are calling on those who can stop the overturning of #RoeVWade: THE MILLIONS of ppl who support #abortionrights. YOU! No business as usual. Shut the country down!” And while we're at it, don't forget you can do your part by donating to local abortion funds.

AND: 

• Protestors in Dallas, Texas came out in full force to a *checks notes* family-friendly drag Sunday brunch to yell at parents and children trying to enjoy a show that featured Kidz Bop hits. The protestors instead suggested that the children should be in church, which is the same place that serves kids wine and calls it the blood of Christ. Sounds like drag in liquid form if you ask me.

• Did you know that only 4% of healthcare research and development in the United States goes towards women's health even now in the year of our lord 2022? You can be a part of changing that just in time for Equal Research Day on June 10th!

• Only seven states have raised the age of purchase for those looking to legally obtain semi-automatic rifles—and now advocates are hoping the other 43 follow suit. Apparently, it's a long shot, which is horrifying because NO CIVILIAN SHOULD BE ABLE TO PURCHASE A SEMI-AUTOMATIC ANYTHING!

• Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of killing two white men during a protest over the shooting of Jacob Blake*, is having a hard time getting into college.

• Employees at a Trader Joe’s in Massachusetts are working towards creating the company’s first union.

• An armed man who was allegedly upset about the potential overturn of Roe v. Wade was arrested not far from Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house. Enough with the freakin guns already.

• Did someone say Princess Diaries 3?????? (It was me, I said it, take me to Genovia).

AFTER THE VERDICT

#MeToo Is Not Dead

But the justice system is on life support. 

BY REBECCA CARROLL

THE INCOMPARABLE DR. SALAMISHAH TILLET (PHOTO BY EMMA MCINTYRE VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

The Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard trial was in turn high camp, a searing commentary on celebrity culture, and a fairly excruciating thing to watch if you have any personal experience of sexual assault. I wanted to talk it—and the verdict—through with someone to make sense of it all. So I sat down with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, scholar, activist, and survivor Dr. Salamishah Tillet, whose organization A Long Walk Home empowers people to end violence against girls and women.

Rebecca: It has been almost a week since the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial ended. You said you did follow it. In what way did it feel like news to you?

Salamishah: Well, there are three parts. There was the actual trial itself, and the ways in which Amber [Heard’s] op-ed was under such scrutiny for defamation—that’s an unusual response to what we think of as a #MeToo allegation, to have a high-profile person like Johnny Depp using the court system to defend himself from accusations of violence. And then there was the intense fan frenzy in which people traveled great distances to just sit outside the courtroom to catch a glimpse of Depp. And finally the online aspects—a lot of real vitriolic attacks against Heard. All of that made it newsworthy to me.

Rebecca: I know a lot of women and survivors of sexual assault, myself included, who had moments of feeling triggered or just despondent, hopeless, or enraged while following the trial. How did you feel?

Salamishah: I felt deep compassion for her. But also I think the hardest part was to [witness]  “bro culture” turn into celebrity addiction. It's interesting to see how these people can remain heroes and remain worthy of being idolized. And I think violence against women is not just commonplace, but something that's taken so lightly that you can have thousands of people celebrating Johnny Depp as an actor, and therefore, that means that it was impossible for him to commit any acts of violence against her. I mean, that's the part that's disheartening, right? As if we needed any other mechanism for silencing people, we have a high-profile case showing how effective this process may be to sue someone for defamation if they've accused you of gender-based violence.

EVEN THE DOG DOESN'T UNDERSTAND WHY THESE PEOPLE ARE WASTING THEIR TIME WHEN JOHNNY DEPP WASN'T EVEN AT THE VERDICT READING (PHOTO BY KENT NISHIMURA VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Rebecca: I’m curious what you think about the inordinate amount of disdain for [Amber Heard].

Salamishah: Amber Heard was alone essentially. Depp had a support system created by his wealth, his celebrity, his gender, and race that she just didn't have. It proves again that you actually need an arsenal to counter men in power. It was a complicated case, yes, but it was a very lonely place for her to exist in. There was no support compared to what Johnny Depp had.

Rebecca: I want to go back to what you were saying about the legal implications of this defamation win.   As someone who is a lifelong activist in this space as well as a survivor, what do you think it means?

Salamishah: I’m working on this big project called In Lieu of the Law: #MeToo and the Politics of Justice. And I bring that up because [as a result of #MeToo and other movements], we may have these personal disclosures, and this really private healing, but we still don’t have any legal justice. I went to the assistant district attorney in Philadelphia [where my assault took place], but at the time, in 1992, physical coercion had to accompany a sexual assault. My sexual assault didn’t fit under the legal definition of rape. It does now because people have advocated to change those laws. But at the time, no means no, wasn’t enough. The person had to threaten your life, and also sexually assault you. And even though the laws are more expansive now, and the cultural attitudes may have shifted, we're still butting up against legal systems and legal parameters that make it easier for people to get away with violence against women. And that's essentially what we saw here too.

Because I was sexually assaulted in college and because I’m a college professor, I really pay attention to the college movement that preceded the #MeToo global movement. [And during] the college sexual assault reform movement that dominated the first decade of the 2000s, students would come forward with allegations of sexual assault and started suing their universities under Title IX protections. What’s fascinating is that now we’ve seen a really strong backlash from mostly men—mostly white men—who’ve been accused of sexual assault, suing the university. And, oftentimes [they] either have their records unblemished or been able to receive restitution from the university. To me, that is an indicator of the trend that we’re going to also see with these #MeToo cases. It’s already been tested in college and university environments.

STUDENTS AT PACE UNIVERSITY DURING A WALKOUT AGAINST SEXUAL ASSAULT ON CAMPUS, 2018 (PHOTO BY DREW ANGERER VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Rebecca: So if we’re talking about the way that the #MeToo movement or your organization A Long Walk Home are creating “safe spaces” —there’s this real discordance with what is happening in the actual legal system.

Salamishah: There's a really good book—it’s called Redefining Rape by Estelle B. Freedman, and she looks at rape reform movements in the suffrage era and the Jim Crow era. And she opens this book with this really obvious but really important idea that the laws around sexual violence or gender-based violence have always protected a particular class of Americans—and that's disproportionately white men. So it’s not as if this moment is ahistorical in that sense. We're just seeing more sophisticated ways of challenging accusations of violence against women—the novelty of the [defamation] claim was pretty surprising—but it's part of a larger history.

Rebecca: I was struck by something that [me.too movement founder] Tarana Burke said in her statement after the verdict was announced, in response to media speculation that the #MeToo movement is dead. And she said, “The movement isn't dead, the system is dead…In the meantime, millions of people who have never been able to utter the words, 'It happened to me' have released this shame that wasn't theirs to carry in the first place.”

Salamishah: I published my story of multiple sexual assaults in my feminist college newspaper in 1997. And so that was my kind of #MeToo moment, in terms of revealing my story, the trauma that I had experienced, and wrestling with the shame and the self-blame that so many victims have. So I clearly remember. And I'm a writer, so for me to write that publicly was cathartic, and I think a transformative moment for me politically and personally. In that sense, I think #MeToo as a global movement is both an epiphany, Oh, I am a victim of violence, and the public acknowledgment of the trauma. That’s what’s historic about #MeToo—this global coming together. I think that is pretty remarkable, and still is part of its seismic, shifting legacy.

Rebecca: And so what would you say to young women and girls—survivors—about how we move forward from here, facing a “dead” system?

Salamishah:  It’s on us to continue to agitate for reform in terms of legislation, in terms of the criminal justice system, and in terms of the court of public opinion. Otherwise, people will continue to be harmed without any repercussions. And so it's on us for using what Tarana said is a dead system. It's on us to revive it or revolutionize it.  So that’s what I think.

Rebecca: Well, all right. God damn.

Dear Meteor readers, 

Happy Pride! Or…is it? Since there have been (checks watch) more than 300 pieces of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation introduced so far in this short, stressful year, we wouldn’t blame you for wondering exactly how festive to feel.

So how do you celebrate during a backlash? I asked my dear friend and former Teen Vogue colleague, Phillip Picardi, and he was emphatic: He is celebrating. This year, he told me, “we need to define our pleasure in order to identify what is worth fighting for, what's worth protecting and nurturing.”

Phill joins us in today’s newsletter, in conversation with another friend: trans writer, activist, editor, and all-around icon Raquel Willis, about how to move beyond just celebrating Pride to using it as an opportunity to remember our history and clarify the priorities of the LGBTQ+ movement.

But first, the news!

Sippin’ slushies,

Samhita Mukhopadhyay

WHAT'S GOING ON

Leaning out: Billionaire Sheryl Sandberg is stepping down from her role as COO of Meta, formerly known as Facebook, aka your favorite home for disinformation and flourishing white-supremacist conspiracy theories. Sandberg, prior to being one of the faces of democratic erosion, was the head captain of workplace feminism through her New York Times best-selling book, Lean In. The book was a hit and a miss—both a refreshing, sometimes galvanizing voice in the change-resistant world of tech and business, and also, at its heart, a tome to individualistic, corporate feminism. Perhaps Sandberg, too, has accepted that you cannot have it all (even when you do have it all). In a statement posted to, obviously, Facebook, she says she’s leaving to focus more on her family and her philanthropic work, “which is more important to me than ever given how critical this moment is for women.” Sounds great! Let’s start by supporting an organization that is fighting disinformation.

233: On Wednesday, an armed gunman walked into a Tulsa hospital and killed four people, two doctors, a receptionist, one patient, and himself. He had bought the firearm, an AR-15, earlier that day; Oklahoma has some of the laxest gun laws in the country: you don’t need to register your firearm, get a background check, nor do you need a permit to buy, carry or conceal a gun. (It even has an “anti-red flag” law, which bans police from taking guns away from people who may pose violent threats, even temporarily. Truly.) Tulsa marks the 233rd mass shooting in 2022. Last night, President Biden appealed to the nation, saying that we *must* take action on gun violence, calling for a ban on AR-15s and pushing for red flag laws. Show your support for universal background checks and sign up to march for sensible gun legislation on June 11th here.

AND:

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis continues his campaign to bring Florida back to the 1800s—this time by trying to ban transition care for minors and Medicaid holders. A new twist on the war on trans youth: including poor people, too.

• The French Open women’s finale today will be a nail-bitter: America’s Coco Gauff vs Poland’s Iga Świątek. I will be watching it, even if the director of the French Open claims it’s difficult to schedule the women’s matches for primetime because it’s been hard to find the right “confrontation or star.”

• There have been so many good pieces weighing the impact of the Depp/Heard verdict. Over at the Guardian, Moira Donegan called it an “orgy of misogyny” and evaluated the trial as the “tipping point” of #metoo backlash. At Rolling Stone, essential reporting from EJ Dickson exposed the impact the trial is already having on survivors, who was told by advocates that they are now hesitant to come forward, let alone consider legal action.

• Stop saying Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall are in a “catfight.” It’s more complicated than that.

IN CONVERSATION

How to Celebrate Pride in the Middle of an Anti-trans Backlash

Phillip Picardi talks to Raquel Willis

NAME A MORE FABULOUS DUO? WE'LL WAIT. (PHOTO BY ASTRID STARWIAZ VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

I’d love to start this newsletter off with a “Happy Pride!” but, to be honest, it’s hard to feel happy right now. As an out gay man who’s worked in the media for over a decade—I’ve never felt more disheartened by what I’m witnessing in the zeitgeist. I’m not just speaking of the senseless acts of police brutality, gun violence, and judicial overreach we’re witnessing in our country. I’m specifically speaking to the war being waged on the LGBTQ+ community, specifically on queer and transgender youth.

Let’s make no mistake about it: We are once again in a dangerous era of American history for LGBTQ+ people. Our nation’s slide toward conservatism is not just nigh—it’s upon us. And newly emboldened, our enemies are betting that the complacency of cisgender, heterosexual people will allow them the opportunity to criminalize and demonize us once more. Many of us are starting to wonder if they’re right.

Trans activists have been warning us about this shift for years. One of them is my friend and former colleague, Raquel Willis, a community organizer who’s worked with the Transgender Law Center and formed Black Trans Circles, a healing and leadership-building program specifically for Black trans women in the South. She was also one of the lead organizers of the historic March for Black Trans Lives in 2020. Raquel and I grew close when I was editing Out and she became the publication’s first Black trans woman to hold a position of leadership, as our executive editor. In every editorial meeting, Raquel always asked us: Who’s missing here? Who is not in our pages? She was constantly holding a mirror up to us as journalists, as people, and as a community to take inventory of who we were valuing and who we were leaving out.

I was honored to talk to Raquel about what it means to “celebrate” Pride this year, where our movement is heading, and to hear more about her radical vision for gender justice.

“Happy” Pride.

THE BLUEPRINT, MARSHA P. JOHNSON (PHOTO BY BARBARA ALPER VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

Phillip Picardi: How are you feeling about Pride Month this year?

Raquel Willis: I always feel conflicted about Pride. For me, it's about acknowledging the queer and trans ancestors who furthered progress for the LGBTQ+ community and who built a foundation for us. [But], these last few years, we've seen the most concerted anti-queer and anti-trans legislation in the history of the United States. Not enough has been done to safeguard the rights and lives of queer and trans youth in particular, and unfortunately, it seems like the movement as a whole is solely on the defensive. Also, all of these attacks—against abortion access, voting rights, gun control—are swirling in the same pot. We've been conditioned as an American society to see these issues as separate, and because of that, we are not only fighting against the GOP, but we’re fighting against each other on the progressive side, just to be heard.

PP: It’s interesting how abortion and queer rights have always been linked. I was watching the Gloria Steinem documentary yesterday, and she was talking about the importance of feminists voting to make abortion a part of the women's rights movement. In the same convention, they also voted as to whether or not discrimination against lesbians should be considered a feminist issue [they did so]. It reminds me of today: Some cis women say they should not include trans women as part of the feminist movement, that trans women are somehow infringing upon cis women's rights.

RW: We have to contend with the fact that we live in an individualistic, white supremacist, cishetero patriarchal capitalist system. That means that a scarcity complex has been present even within the most leftist, most progressive circles. When you look at the larger movement for feminism, we have seen so many splinters throughout history—Black feminism, lesbian feminism, trans feminism, queer theory, etc.—because those wounds of exclusion have never been adequately addressed. They’ve continued to be weaknesses that conservatives have been able to exploit. When we talk about conservatives, we’re not just [talking about] cis, white, privileged straight men. It is also trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs).

PP: We know that conservative organizations are deliberately working to disguise bigotry as common sense talking points—which are then being parroted by people who we consider to be on the left.

RW:  A lot of what is being parroted by figures like JK Rowling, or Dave Chappelle, or Ricky Gervais, or Bill Maher is a regurgitation of a fascistic, fear-mongering ideology that comes from the GOP. They release it out into the zeitgeist because they can take advantage of confirmation bias—these baseline ignorant ideas that the average person has about queer and trans people or people of color. There has to be a villain. The villain becomes the Other. As a Black trans woman, I'm constantly disgusted by how trans people are discussed, particularly in niche media, like Black media. They know if they put up our image or our experiences without context, the average person within their target demographic is going to feel negatively about us.

YES, PLEASE END GENDER REVEALS. (PHOTO BY MICHAEL M. SANTIAGO VIA GETTY IMAGES)

PP: It’s especially disconcerting because people demonize trans people using familiar tropes that revolve around them being an “impostor”, or a ”traitor” to their gender. Similar tropes have commonly been employed to target women and especially Black women. People in the feminist movement were often called “angry lesbians,” or they were assumed to be ugly and sexless. Some Black women in the public eye who do not fit the mold of White Eurocentric beauty standards have been compared to animals. These are all ways to strip people of their personhood, and particularly to strip people of their womanhood. It is frustrating to see how people can't relate these two issues and find solidarity among them.

RW: Absolutely. No one should be moving through this world thinking that their lives are not political. Everything about your existence, everything about what you have and don't have, is political. We're all being impacted by these restrictive ideas about what it means to be a man or woman, or nonbinary, or everything and nothing all at once. And the sooner we can grasp that, the sooner we can come up with the solutions to make our families, our communities, and our societies better.

PP: You mentioned earlier that a lot of advocates warned that resting our laurels on Roe [to protect abortion access] could be dangerous. You could say the very same thing about the Gay Rights Movement’s very deliberate move to adopt marriage equality and military representation as their pet causes. The driving idea at that time was obviously palatability. We knew that if we could appeal to we're just like you, we're people, love is love, let us serve, let us be patriots like you, that we could win public approval. And ultimately we did. What the movement didn't anticipate was that those rights could be stripped away less than a decade later.

RW: When I think about this long arc of the LGBTQ+ movement, there have been those people who thought that if they could just move into cis-hetero society, then all of their issues would be fixed. So when cis gay men and lesbians were thinking about what political power looked like, they wanted to assimilate and be palatable because that was the extent of their imagination.

And there were decisions made along the way to exclude trans folks, and gender non-conforming folks, and nonbinary folks. We have to contend with that history and we have to contend with the fact that our infrastructure nationally has been built with that mindset in place. And so that's why our movement has not been ready to react in a moment where conservatives have pinpointed the Achilles heel of our movement: the exclusion of trans and nonbinary folks.

THE LESBIAN AVENGERS, NYC PRIDE PARADE 1995 (PHOTO BY STUART LUTZ VIA GETTY IMAGES)

PP: And now that our "wins" are being rolled back, we need to rely on each other more than ever—by banding together as a community that doesn't prioritize the cis-hetero patriarchy. One of the things that I do find to be extremely practical and inspiring about trans liberation is that I, myself, was considered a gender traitor. I was an effeminate young boy who refused to act more masculine, who insisted on wearing pink, and loving the Spice Girls, and wearing makeup, and putting on my mother's clothes. I was policed, and bullied, and called names often by people in my own family. That doesn't make me trans, but it reinforces my belief that trans liberation, had it existed back then, would have laid some sort of blueprint to say: You don't need to conform, you can be exactly who you are, you can be beautiful, and you can be loved.

RW: I think you get to an essential element of what ties everyone's experience together. It's not that I believe that everyone is trans. No, honey, I don't think everyone is that gifted, that brilliant, that colorful, and that's okay! But everyone is “gender nonconforming,” and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we can break down all of these expectations that are not only hurting trans and gender-nonconforming folks, and queer folks, and women, but [also] hurting these cishet men who dream of embodying a toxically masculine ideal.

PP: A lot of what you're saying reminds me of your speech at the Brooklyn Trans Liberation March in 2020, where you said, "I believe in my power. I believe in your power. I believe in our power. I believe in Black trans power." Can you tell me a little bit about how that worked in your mind and why it's an important rallying cry moving forward?

RW: One thing that was always clear to me is that there’s something about queerness that forces you to look at people differently. It forces you to understand that there's this whole interior world that everyone has. Hopefully you get to a point in your journey where there's healing and you understand at least a smidge of your own power.

I figured along the way that if I was going to have to have this difficult life that I was told I was going to have by religion and community and society, then I was like, well, let's fuck some shit up along the way. And how do I inspire other people to fuck some shit up along the way? Because if we're going to be damned, honey, then I want to be damned and cute and at least have these little moments of joy that I can grasp at. I think that's where I'm at with movement work and with social justice and with our society. We have so many deep issues within our world that it will probably take centuries to figure out some better way forward for everyone. The best we can do is figure out how to be a part of that fight and also have whole, full, and joyful lives along the way.

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Dear Meteor readers,

“Our bodies are not designed to absorb and process this much violence, loss, and grief,” Min Jin Lee tweeted on Wednesday after this week’s massacre in Uvalde, Texas.

I have not been able to get these words out of my head as I’ve tried to move on this week—as I’m sure you have, too—heartbroken, haunted by the beautiful children’s faces, sitting with their parent’s grief, and unable to shake the horrid details that continue to emerge, and enraged that on the heels of the tragedy, the NRA went ahead with its convention (despite some Republicans and several country musicians pulling out).

The mourning, grief, and anger cycle is on repeat. If you missed it, do check out our list of ways to break the pattern of inaction.

Meanwhile, the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp defamation trial, which has been simmering in the background for the last two weeks, is entering its final days as the jury is now deliberating. Avoiding this event has been damn near impossible—prior to this week, the trial had been the most talked-about story this spring across social platforms: more than abortion, Ukraine, and even COVID.

While I’ve watched the bafflingly un-nuanced reaction unfold, there’s one person I’ve really been wanting to hear from—my friend Jaclyn Friedman. Jaclyn is a writer, activist, and sex educator who has been working on survivor justice for a long time. She is the co-editor of two important anthologies about rape culture, including Yes Means Yes: Visions of Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, and wrote two books on consent, power, and sex. TL;DR—she knows her shit!

Jaclyn says she knows exactly why we mistrust Amber Heard, and she’s written a searing essay about that and what it costs victims of intimate partner violence.

But first, the news.

Holding a fire extinguisher,

Samhita Mukhopadhyay

WHAT'S GOING ON

90 minutes: In many communities there is a saying: order a pizza and call the cops, see who comes first—the unspoken wisdom being that the police force in some neighborhoods (predominantly those of color) are in no rush to protect and serve. As more details about the police response to the Uvalde shooting emerge, it is shocking to learn the timeline laid out by Texas safety officials. What is most unsettling is that first responders didn't immediately breach the school,  after the shooter had gone inside. In fact, it would be another hour before a tactical team got close to the classroom where he had barricaded himself along with his victims. During that time—while parents were begging for help, for anyone, to save their children—officers “took cover” outside and waited for more backup so as not to risk being gunned down by a semi-automatic weapon. So answer me this: If even the “good guys with guns” are ineffective against an AR-15, how have we not banned the legal sale of that weapon? *Stares at every member of Congress*

The heat is on: Our leaders have been rightfully and urgently called to the mat for inaction on gun control. (Reportedly, a small group of Senators is trying to find common ground on gun legislation, including red-flag laws or expanding background checks) You know what’s making me skeptical? That Democratic leadership backed a pro-gun, anti-choice Democrat (Rep. Henry Cuellar) over a pro-choice young woman of color ready to back sensible gun legislation (Jessica Cisneros) in the District 28 race in Texas. The runoff was held the same day as the massacre in Uvalde, and as of Friday Cisneros was trailing by only 177 votes. As Rebecca Traister pointed out, this might be why we need new leadership.

Getting away with it: The FBI agents who fumbled the Larry Nassar investigations will not be facing criminal charges from the Department of Justice. Now mind you, in July of last year, the DOJ found “gross failures” on the part of the FBI agents who first received complaints from gymnasts in 2015. The two agents responsible for this absolute clown show, Michael Langeman and W. Jay Abbott, have been met with little more than a slap on the wrist: Langeman was fired from his position after the DOJ released its findings and Abbott retired. Must be real fuckin’ nice to retire in peace while more than 200 women deal with the trauma of being abused by Larry Nassar.

Come on Barbie, let’s go party: Serious Feminists™ have made much ado about Barbie dolls and their representation of regressive feminity. But for this brief moment in time, the doll is doing some good. On Friday, toy company Mattel released a new Collector’s Edition Barbie created in the likeness of Laverne Cox. While the doll is not an exact replica of the iconic Cox, this is the first ever Barbie modeled after a transgender person and its release is a big fabulous middle finger to the more than 200 anti-trans state bills filed this year. *Adds to cart*

AND:

• Actor Kevin Spacey has been charged with four counts of sexual assault in the U.K.

• The most accurate statement of the week is brought to you by writer Damon Young: “cowardice is the point of white supremacy, too.”

• There are no improvements in sight for the baby formula shortage. But you can still help by donating unused formula if you are lucky enough to have some.

INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE 

Why Everyone Online is Having Such a Ball Trashing Amber Heard

It's not a mystery—but it has real consequences, for survivors and all of us

BY JACLYN FRIEDMAN

AMBER HEARD LEAVING THE COURTHOUSE, WHERE HER TESTIMONY WOULD SOON BE DUETED BY A BUNCH OF TIKTOKERS. (PHOTO BY CLIFF OWEN VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

If you’ve been off-planet for the last month, lucky you! You may have missed the fact that Johnny Depp is currently suing his ex-wife, Amber Heard, for defamation, based on a 2018 op-ed she wrote in which she identified herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse,” but did not mention him by name. Heard is countersuing. The trial has made constant international headlines for the bizarre and shocking things that have been testified to under oath about both Depp and Heard. And it has unleashed a truly unprecedented torrent of pro-Depp shrieking in nearly every corner of Al Gore’s internet.

Some of it has not been exactly organic. Last Thursday, Vice broke the news that the Daily Wire (Ben Shapiro’s personal megaphone and the most likely publisher of whatever your racist aunt shared on Facebook today) has reportedly spent tens of thousands of dollars promoting biased and misleading pro-Johnny Depp content on social media. I wish I could say I was surprised, but honestly, the bear hug that “Hollywood elite” Johnny Depp is getting from “men’s rights activists” and white supremacists is the least shocking development since the hilarious failure of Truth Social.

Of course, they love him: he validates their entire worldview, which is that they are the real victims of feminism run amok and that saying otherwise is not just misguided but abusive. Of course, the right is invested in trivializing assault; there are enough 2022 GOP candidates facing allegations of sexual assault and/or domestic violence to warrant a New York Times trend piece. So of course conservatives are forking over loads of cash to flood the zone with pro-Depp propaganda.

But what feels genuinely shocking to me this time around is how many folks who should really know better are falling hard for it.

Yes, yes, Johnny Depp used to be dreamy. Trust me, I know. I was 15 when he broke through (my loins) as a face-meltingly hot damaged bad-boy cop on “21 Jump Street,” and 19 when “Edward Scissorhands” branded me with false (sexy) impressions about weirdo emo outsider men that I still haven’t been able to shake. Don’t bother me about Captain Jack Sparrow, that shit is like stevia compared to the pure cane sugar of early Johnny Depp hotness.

THERE'S NO WAY THIS BABY HAS SEEN A JOHNNY DEPP FILM AND CONSENTED TO JOIN HIS "TEAM." (PHOTO BY SARAH SILBIGER VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

But this jubilant defense of Depp goes beyond the derangement of parasocial adoration.  And while I’ve seen some thoughtful stories about Heard as an “imperfect victim,” I don’t think the reaction is just about the “complicated” details of the case, either. If the common wisdom—that Depp was a victim of Heard’s alleged abuses too—was sincere, the cultural conversation would be solemn. Instead, the reaction has been ecstatic and deranged—we are getting cat memes and Lance Bass on TikTok. Even Kate McKinnon gleefully treated the trial like a joke.

Now, remember: Amber Heard has testified that Johnny Depp hit her so hard that blood from her lip ended up on the wall, pulled her hair out of her scalp in chunks, and made her fear for her life on more than one occasion, among many other allegations found credible by a British judge in a separate case (where it is harder to prove such things than even in the U.S.). Depp testified that Heard struck him, threw things at him, and mocked him for objecting. So why is everyone having such a good time joking about domestic violence?

The reason is simple but awful: we, as a culture, hate believing women. I don’t just mean we find it hard to believe women. I mean we hate it. Studies have shown that we like women less when we actually have to listen to them. It is psychologically painful for most of us to believe women, even when we are women. So after years of at least sort of holding the line on #metoo, what a giddy relief so many seem to be feeling to not have to right now.

OKAY, BUT WHY? (PHOTO BY SARAH SILBIGER VIA GETTY IMAGES)

The facts of this case are just easy enough to manipulate to give anyone who wants it permission to stop doing the painful work of treating women as credible witnesses to their own abuse—work that anti-violence advocates have, in recent years, succeeded in convincing more people to undertake. Evidently, putting that burden down feels, to far too many of those people, like taking off an ill-fitting bra at the end of a long day.

Let me be clear: People of all genders can be abused, and people of all genders can be abusers. And most cases of intimate partner violence are hard to parse from the outside because it’s very common for victims to act in all kinds of ways that don’t seem like how we think victims “should” act. Abusers exploit this very fact in courts every single day. We just don’t usually get to watch it on live television. (If you’re having trouble sorting through what you’ve heard about this case, here are a few pieces I highly recommend.)

But whatever you personally believe, the way so many people have turned blaming Amber Heard into a bloodsport is already taking an awful toll on nearly every survivor I know—including myself. It’s hard to explain the hollow, falling feeling I get in the pit of my stomach each time I see someone I thought I could trust join in on the “fun,” somehow not considering (or caring?) that they might as well be laughing at one of the worst things anyone has ever done to me.

And the impacts on survivors only get worse from here. If Depp wins the suit against Heard for saying she was abused—again, without even naming him!—it is going to get a lot easier for abusers everywhere to use the courts to silence the exes they abused, too.  Whatever the jury decides, the euphorically vicious discourse has already sent a message to abuse survivors everywhere: if you dare speak up, you will be mocked and attacked from all sides. It’s no wonder that survivors are already considering backing away from their own cases, or that Depp fans are now turning on other survivors, as well as on Depp’s own daughter for not supporting him more publicly.

The impact of this misogynist Rumspringa will be felt by victims for a long time to come.

When I was in my 20s, my girlfriend Leslie had a therapist who explained the four steps of consciousness in the process of changing our behaviors and beliefs. You start out in unconscious incompetence, unaware of the things you’re doing or thinking that are harmful to you or others. Then, if you try, you move into conscious incompetence. This is the worst of all the phases: you’re aware of how you’re messing up, but you still somehow can’t stop doing it. If you keep at it from there, you can intermittently achieve conscious competence, where if you focus really hard, you can do something different and better. And if you keep at it long enough, you can sometimes get all the way to the ultimate goal: unconscious competence.

500 MILES? HAVE YOU SEEN THE PRICE OF GAS? THIS IS FISCALLY IRRESPONSIBLE! (PHOTO BY RON SACHS VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

The reason it’s so hard for humans to change, even when we know we should, is because those two middle phases—conscious incompetence and conscious competence—take so bloody long, require so much work, and are painfully uncomfortable. Trying to change is the worst. That’s why we tend to hate women who force us to make the attempt.

I believe Amber Heard. I can’t make you believe her if you don’t. But for fuck’s sake, this case isn’t some metaphorical trip to Vegas where everything you do and say about this trial will stay there. It has already made the world a much scarier place for people who’ve been targeted by abusers, and a much friendlier place for abusive assholes who are right now selecting their next victims. Survivors don’t ever get a vacation from our trauma. So you don’t get a vacation from trying to teach yourself to care.

WE ASKED YOU ANSWERED 

Last Saturday, Megan Reynolds wrote about the importance of unplugging—and we asked how you get that impossible task done. Thanks to readers Elaine, Cynthia, Katherine, Lauren, and Ruben for sharing their thoughts, and a special shout-out to Anna C. (who’s been at a breaking point since 2020; same) for her unplugging tactic: “focus on what’s in my control.” I’m starting by focusing on how I can work to eliminate gun violence in my own state.

Thanks for the tips, y’all,

Shannon

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Dear Meteor readers,

On Tuesday morning, 19 elementary school students in Uvalde, Texas, got ready for school. They threw their homework into their backpacks, finished their breakfast, tied their shoes, and ran out the door. Those nineteen children with entire lives ahead of them—two days before the end of the school year and the joy of summer break—never returned home. They, along with two of their teachers, were gunned down by weapons so powerful that the bodies of the victims were unrecognizable. They were targeted, hunted, and brutally killed by an 18-year-old who had legally purchased two assault rifles on his birthday.

The tragedy is unspeakable—but it is no longer unimaginable. It is now a well-worn, inevitable cycle—a mass shooting, lives shattered, outcry, grief, and…no substantial change. The headlines end up on the lower half of the paper; the questions to politicians stop, and the trauma gets ingrained. As a father of a Parkland victim told Anderson Cooper on CNN Tuesday night, “it’s what I call a ‘new normal’.”

The idea of a father who has lost a child to gun violence having to acknowledge that this horror now seems “normal” made us sick to our stomachs. But he is, after all, right: This is not the first time we’ve been here, nor will it be the last. This is the third mass shooting in a week; there have been 212 in the United States alone this year and 27 of them have been in schools. Every shooting, we are told, is the “tipping point” that will change the will of politicians on guns. But Congress has yet to pass any meaningful gun control legislation for 28 years, since the assault-weapons ban of 1994. After Sandy Hook, another supposed tipping point, the Republican-controlled Senate thwarted every effort to pass a sensible gun law—including enhanced background checks, something 90% of Americans support. We’ve been worn down by years of inaction. It makes sense to feel hopeless.

MASS SHOOTINGS HAVE HAPPENED IN NEARLY EVERY STATE IN THE U.S. AND POLITICIANS ARE STILL DRAGGING THEIR FEET OVER REFORM. (IMAGE VIA EVERYTOWN FOR GUN SAFETY) 

But it’s also exactly what opponents of gun reform want us to feel. As Molly Jong-Fast put it on Twitter, we need to take bold action now; if we do not, the Republicans will do what they always do–“memory-hole” this tragedy and use talking points and legal grandstanding to erase the fact that what we’re talking about is the bloody massacre of innocent children.

But if you are looking for immediate and decisive action—you’d be hard-pressed to find it from Democrats right now, either. “When in God’s name will we stand up to the gun lobby?” Biden asked in his address to the nation. “What are we doing?” cried Senator Chris Murphy on the Senate floor (great speech...but who is we). “Americans can cast their vote in November,” Senator Chuck Schumer said when asked if Tuesday’s tragedy would precipitate an immediate gun bill that could save lives.

Should they not have the answers? Isn’t that the reason we all got out the vote in the last umpteen elections? Should they not have the plan? And why did Democratic party leadership endorse incumbent anti-abortion Rep. Henry Cuellar (who has an A rating from the NRA) over pro-gun control and pro-choice candidate Jessica Cisneros in none other than Texas? Make it make sense.

WE KNOW YOU'RE SICK OF HEARING IT BUT ELECTIONS ARE CRITICAL!! (IMAGE VIA VOTO LATINO)

The bottom line is this: We could dramatically reduce gun violence now, and not doing so is a deliberate choice. As Chris Hayes pointed out: Many of the issues that plague the United States are complicated—they are rooted in histories of oppression, of colonization. But not guns. Gun violence, at the rate that it occurs in the United States, is uniquely American and is directly connected to how many guns civilians can and already have access to. If you make guns less accessible, gun violence drops. No other country's leadership sits by idly while their children are slaughtered at school.

But we can do something—donate, call your legislator, share resources, march. We’ve put together a list below of actions you can take today.

It won’t bring those children back. Won’t help the parents who waited last night at the Uvalde civic center to confirm if their child was dead or alive.

But it’s our only option. As our colleague Brittany Packnett Cunningham says on today's UNDISTRACTED, “I  don't know what it's going to take. But I can't live like this. My son can't live like this. None of us should have to live like this.”

Y por nuestros gentes Latines, estamos unidos en nuestro dolor. No se importa si somos Mexicanos, Borinquen, Dominicanos, Sudamericanos—en este momento somos una sola comunidad fuertisomo. Sobreviviremos. Pa’lante. Siempre, pa’lante.

In love and solidarity,

Samhita and Shannon

WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW

If you’re someone who believes in thoughts, prayers, full moon rituals, or faith in a higher power, please do all of those things and call on all the gods and ancestors. But as many prophets have taught, faith without works is dead. Here are some small works that can make a difference:

TO HELP THE FAMILIES IN UVALDE

• Donate to the Texas Elementary School Shooting Relief Hub or to the League of United Latin American Citizens, a grassroots civil rights organization working to help victims on the ground.

• If you’re in the South Texas area, there are two blood drives underway at local hospitals where some children who remain in critical condition are being treated.

TO HELP KIDS ACROSS THE U.S. COPE WITH THIS AND FUTURE DISASTERS 

• Support March for Our Lives’ goal to fund more social workers and mental health specialists and less police presence in schools.

TO HELP END GUN VIOLENCE 

• Make a call to get the NRA convention, scheduled to begin Friday at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas, canceled. They don’t get to brainstorm lobbying tactics while the rest of the country mourns.

• Even if you can’t stand your elected representative, send a letter pleading with them to end the filibuster—a tool used time and time again to prevent the passage of common sense gun reform.

•  Once you’re tired of yelling at your local officials, give Senator Mitch McConnell a call. As Sherilynn Ifill reminds us, he vowed to block gun reform after Sandy Hook and hasn’t stopped.

• Join a local or national gun reform organization like CeaseFirePA, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, Newtown Action Alliance–or even start a group in your neighborhood.

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Dear Meteor readers,

I hope you are enjoying your weekend. I’m currently on my way to upstate New York: and my sunscreen is on but my phone is, shockingly, off. I like to unplug on the weekends—stay off social media, disable my alerts, and do something with my hands. (Have you even lived if you haven’t taken a Saturday afternoon nap atop unwanted tote bags you found while organizing a closet?)

Why am I sharing so much? Because news fatigue is real—and it took me years to figure that out. It’s been a tough week news-wise—we know that—and so for today writer Megan Reynolds gives us some reflections on what it looks like to disengage from the news cycle even when the world is on fire.

We’re curious to know how you unplug—and whether you do. So before you stash your phone, answer our reader survey on the subject.

But first, a little bit of news—to read at your convenience, and only when you’re ready.

From the woods,

Samhita Mukhopadhyay

WHAT'S GOING ON

It’s not okay in OK: Legislators in Oklahoma have passed *the* strictest anti-abortion bill in the country—banning abortion at “fertilization.” The bill also would allow citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone else they suspect has knowingly “aided or abetted” in abortion care. Gov. Kevin Stitt—who literally vowed to make Oklahoma the most anti-abortion state in the country—will likely sign this bill, meaning it will go into effect ASAP. Retire, bitch. The rest of us can donate to the Oklahoma Roe Fund here.

Feeding babies is apparently controversial: The House passed two bills earlier this week to help support families during the terrifying shortage of baby formula across the United States. One of the bills allows families to use money from a federal program to purchase formula. The other, apparently more controversial, bill would give 28 million dollars to the FDA to prevent this clusterfuck from happening again. Sounds great, right? Too bad 192 Republicans voted against it! I can’t think of a less controversial issue than babies need food and we should feed them, but ok. Here are some resources if you are trying to find formula or support a family that is.

AND:

• Jill Filipovic says we are on the precipice of an anti-feminist backlash. She's right and you should read this prescient piece. But is it a backlash or is it just misogynist business as usual? Discuss.

• Congratulations to Rihanna on the birth of her baby!! Fenty for infants when?

• Anna Delvey is starting a law firm. That’s not the punchline to a joke; that is an actual thing.

• Don’t miss this searing, personal essay from Irin Carmon over at New York Magazine about what happens to the body during pregnancy and childbirth, and why those realities are absent from public discourse on motherhood and choice.

• If you’ve been seeing a lot of strange videos in your FYP or explore page regarding Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, there’s a (very creepy) reason for that!

PERMISSION TO UNPLUG

There's a Better Way to Manage the Unrelenting News Cycle

Maybe you feel guilty tuning out, but a little breather could make all the difference. 

BY MEGAN REYNOLDS

ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATION BY UZO NGWU

Every morning for the past four and a half years, I would wake up, make coffee, and settle in for a day of imbibing the trials and tribulations of the world at large, via Twitter, an overflowing RSS reader, and the Slack channel of the feminist website where I worked. The purview of the website was large—covering everything from the Republican war on abortion to Bennifer 2.0—which meant that the possibilities for content were endless. I was dialed in and it was impossible to separate my leisure time from my work time. (RIP to the late-night Slack messages I sent to myself full of stray links, TikToks, tweets, and other digital ephemera, accompanied by hastily-written notes that, when viewed in the light of day, made little to no sense.)

I was living the dream, especially for a writer–I could cover whatever I wanted, as long as it was in the news and I had something to say about it. With each passing catastrophe, the pressure to say something of note about current events became too much.

Working in digital media straight through the pandemic planted the seeds for what I now understand to be burnout. As we all retreated to our homes, my coworkers and I were still tethered to work and each other through our shared Slack. There was a comfort in knowing that we were going through this together. Being plugged into the news cycle and producing work felt like the only way to manage the uncertainty of the world at large. And there was a certain pride attached to it—that even in the face of an unprecedented global health emergency and a massive shift in perspective, I was able to produce something that was informing people and possibly helping them in their time of need.

But I was exhausted, cranky, and clenched my jaw so much that sometimes, I bit down on a Popsicle so that I wouldn’t grind my teeth. Occasionally, I burst into tears over the smallest of slights.

When I left my job as a writer at the end of 2021, I immediately detached from the news cycle. In a way, I buried my head in the sand out of necessity, in part for my own survival. Suddenly, I was afforded the privilege of simply having an opinion and keeping it to myself. For a period of time, I stopped reading each individual morsel of news that crossed my path, be it in a text message or on Twitter or Facebook, and chose to use the internet for activities I’d previously abandoned, like online shopping and watching hours of beauty tutorials on YouTube.

Playing dumb in this way felt unusual at first. But I realized I had managed to fully disconnect when a friend texted me about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars (I’d stopped watching the telecast before it happened.) That this friend came to me with this news instead of the other way around meant that I’d almost gotten free. “I can’t believe I knew this before you,” my friend told me. Neither could I, but it felt great.

And it felt freeing. Watching television or reading a book, two activities that had become work, also, became leisure activities once more. But unplugging myself from that particular matrix was difficult, because a small part of me enjoyed the hustle and the bustle, as damaging as it was to my mental health. I was essentially trauma-bonded to the colleagues I’d worked with, and they were now my friends. For a few weeks after I left that job, my brain still churned with ideas and stray thoughts that could’ve been essays; instead of turning these into something bigger, I simply texted my friends, relishing in what I believe normal people call “conversation.”

I’m not saying that ignoring the atrocities that have become our new normal is a solution, in fact, it’s impossible to ignore these things because they take such a toll on our lives. But there is deep value in taking a moment between crises to breathe.  An act as small as condensing the constant barrage of notifications from various news sources into an easily-digestible summary that is now delivered to my phone once a day, drastically lowered my stress levels and still allowed me to be informed rather than overloaded with information.

I have learned that this is what a boundary feels like: the invisible line that exists between my feelings and something else, a line that exists to protect me from harm. Erecting that boundary has made it easier to engage with the news now, especially given the current moment. And while setting boundaries for what I consume sounds simplistic, it is an incredibly difficult thing to do in the midst of my reproductive rights and my very identity coming under constant fire. For some disengaging is merely a privilege, but for others, it can be the only way to get through a day. Or even save us from utterly losing hope.

Now that I no longer feel the need to respond publicly to everything that happens in the world, I can actually digest what is happening, and direct my energy toward the causes, issues, and concerns that matter. But it was only after I allowed myself to take that space that I felt I had the energy and the brainpower to really, deeply care again.

TELL US HOW YOU UNPLUG 

Disengaging from the news can be difficult. I, for one, have logged an embarrassing amount of hours on my phone this last week googling, “what is the difference between colonization and free association.” How do I disconnect? I rollerskate at a local park. It’s really hard to think about anything else when you’re rolling down a hill at 20 MPH.

We’d love to know how you find a slice of peace during These Times™. Click the button below to share your tips with us and we’ll feature some of your responses in our next newsletter!

xoxo,

Shannon Melero

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Dear Meteor readers,

How many times are we going to write to you with, “It’s been a tough week,” or “We’re totally out of words,” or “What else is there left to say?” But here we are, again. We’re in the unfortunate business of expressing ourselves with words, and yet we have run out of them.

When the news hit over the weekend that an armed gunman had walked into a grocery store in Buffalo, NY, and opened fire on the patrons, shooting 13 of them and killing 10, I’m sure, you, like us, were wordless too. What is there to say when you hear that Andre Mackniel was shot dead while picking up a birthday cake for his young son? Or that long-time community activist 72-year-old Katherine Massey—who had written an editorial just last year urging more federal firearms legislation—was among the victims?

And before we could even process it—there was another shooting. And then another. Since the start of this year, there have been 200 mass shootings.

Disgust. Anger. Despair. Fear. These were all the feelings—especially after it was reported that the Buffalo shooter had written a manifesto and had intentionally targeted Black people. White supremacy—not just hatred, but an organized strategy, rooted in the myth of the Great Replacement Theory—is revealed over and over again.

We are so far from a solution to gun violence and to a solution to white supremacy. But as Meteor founding member Treasure Brooks put it in her beautiful monologue, “it ain't going to go away unless we make it go away.”

Now back to that other ongoing disaster, in today’s newsletter, Sarah Leonard, writer and founder of Marxist feminist publication Lux, considers another possible strategy in the fight to defend our abortion rights.

But first, some news.

Trying to keep it together,

Samhita and Shannon

WHAT'S GOING ON

#WeAreBG: WNBA star Britney Griner has been wrongfully detained in Russia since February—for allegedly possessing hashish oil. The consensus among sportswriters and athletes has been to not make much noise about the arrest in the United States in the hopes that silence would somehow keep her safe. The choice to remain silent was also an economic one, many WNBA players travel overseas during their off-season to make additional money. Speaking out against BG’s detainment could put their second jobs on the line and even WNBA leadership encouraged discretion. But now it’s been months—and keeping quiet hasn’t done jack. On Tuesday, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver explained that his league is now working in concert with the WNBA to bring BG home. Silver told ESPN. “Our No. 1 priority is her health and safety and making sure that she gets out of Russia.” Say it louder.

USWNT: Hey! It’s something good! The U.S. Women’s National Team has achieved equal pay for the first time in its history. Earlier this year, players came to a settlement with their employers over a longstanding pay discrimination suit; that was a victory but didn’t quite make it to the back of the net if you will. The money promised to the players in the settlement earlier this spring was contingent on the ratification of a new collective bargaining agreement that would provide a structure for equal pay and equal treatment between the men’s and women’s teams. Well, now, that agreement has been reached, and to quote one of my favorite announcers we’ve got ourselves a GOOLLLAAZZOOOOOO! Going forward, the two teams will be receiving equal pay for games, equal accommodation, and the one thing everyone thought was impossible: equal World Cup Prize money. Which certainly the men’s team must be extra excited about considering they haven’t been serious contenders for the World Cup since *checks calendar* 2002. Now at least we can really mean it when we say, One nation, one team.

AND:

• An unprecedented investigative report was published this week, looking into the previously obscured deaths of Native children in boarding schools. The Federal Indian Boarding School Program took Native children from their homes, and in some cases caused their deaths—but the extent of the atrocities had not been documented to date.

• If you ever wondered how people fed babies before the invention of formula, a food historian has the answer.

• A town in France voted to allow women to wear burkini (a full coverage bathing suit)—but the French government is scheduling a new vote to shoot that decision down.

BLAST FROM THE PAST 

Could the ERA Get Us Out of the Abortion Rights Disaster?

It's complicated.

BY SARAH LEONARD

Y'ALL REALLY BEEN FIGHTING OVER THE ERA LONGER THAN SOME OF US HAVE BEEN ALIVE (PHOTO BY PATRICIA SULLIVAN VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

You know the deal—the looming overturn of Roe v. Wade means that trigger laws restricting abortion are likely to go into effect across the country, and a nation already suffering from a dearth of abortion clinics and radically unequal access—will become a much more dangerous place for anyone who can get pregnant.

The release of a draft SCOTUS opinion has sent us into a terrifying scramble for new tools to protect abortion rights. But some legal scholars argue that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)—the constitutional amendment guaranteeing sex equality—could be a powerful one.

I remember, shortly after the 2016 election, being approached by an ERA activist at an event and finding myself a bit baffled. What was the likelihood of Americans getting really jazzed around a long-ignored legal reform when women were taking to the streets, organizers were standing in front of deportation buses, and the newly named alt-right was holding rallies with openly carried firearms? And doesn’t the 14th amendment guarantee equal protection under the law anyway?

After the leaked opinion, I was moved to dig deeper when I heard that scholars were developing an argument to use the ERA to protect our rights. What if an old idea could offer the key to undoing new abortion restrictions?

First, some context. If you watched FX’s miniseries Mrs. America, you may have gotten a snapshot of how the ERA looked poised for an easy victory in the mid-1970s before careening off a cliff by the end of the decade. (If you haven’t, I highly recommend it as a tutorial–it shows the strategic fights within the women’s movement and the rise of Phyllis Schlafly–plus it’s got Cate Blanchett and a trippy hazy sequence at the 1977 National Women’s Conference!) The ERA had been first proposed in the 1920s, but gained momentum during the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s. It read, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

NATIONAL ERA MARCH, 1978. (PHOTO BY ANNE E. ZELLE VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

The amendment quickly became a bipartisan cause—with support that spanned the political spectrum from Gloria Steinem to Richard Nixon. By 1972, it had passed both houses of Congress. (Mrs. America features a charming scene in which supporters like Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm and feminist Betty Friedan lift champagne in paper cups to celebrate). It was then sent to the states for ratification; 35 out of the necessary 38 states passed it by 1977.

But the fight wasn’t over. Conservative cold warrior Phyllis Schlafly made her contribution to a rising right-wing movement by turning the ERA into a subject of high partisan drama, rallying overwhelmingly white housewives to denounce the amendment and defend the privileges it would supposedly strip from them, like exemption from the draft. States began rescinding their support and progress halted. The unbeatable amendment looked dead, and the champagne went flat. The ERA went from bipartisan to no-partisan, and its remains were swept into the dustbin of 1970s history by the Reagan revolution. A deadline, imposed by Congress and the president, for the amendment to be ratified came and went in 1982—although it was never clear if that time limit was legal to begin with.

The nearly-passed amendment moldered in limbo for nearly forty years. It took another conservative revolution to revive interest in it: Donald Trump’s presidency.

This time, it had legs, and between 2017 and 2020, the remaining three states ratified the ERA, meaning that, if one viewed the deadline as illegitimate, the amendment should now be the law of the land and be certified by the Archivist of the United States. But the Department of Justice under Trump advised the archivist to reject the amendment in deference to the deadline and the result has been another extended limbo.

As two legal scholars explained in detail in the Washington Post, the passage of constitutional amendments has always been messy, and today, experts disagree on whether the ERA is already part of the Constitution (and if not, what to do about it). You can be mad at the Trump DOJ, at the archivist, or at the ghost of Schlafly—any of whom bear some responsibility for our current position. But the murky legality of the ERA makes it especially hard to know how to fight for it.

MRS. PHYLLIS STOP THE ERA SCHLAFLY (PHOTO BY BETTMANN ARCHIVE VIA GETTY IMAGES)

To figure this mess out, I called Katherine Franke, a Professor of Law at Columbia University, and Director of the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law, where she launched the ERA Project to study and develop policy in relation to the amendment. You must be busy, I told her. “We’re all busy!” she responded. I got down to business.

In short, Franke believes that the ERA has the potential to protect abortion on grounds of sex equality, instead of on privacy grounds, as put forward in Roe v. Wade. SCOTUS’s draft opinion rejects the notion that any existing Constitutional provision protects abortion, including the 14th amendment from which the notion of a right to privacy emerges. (It should be noted that the grounds on which Roe was decided have long been controversial even among liberals; Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg believed that privacy was a weak basis for protecting abortion.)

The ERA Project has laid out a number of arguments about how the ERA’s more explicit language about sex equality could render abortion restrictions unconstitutional, including that such restrictions “single out abortions for more onerous treatment than other medical procedures that carry similar or greater risks.” At the moment, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is hearing a case about whether the state’s ban on Medicaid funding for abortion violates the state’s ERA (they instituted their own in 1971). The ERA Project has submitted an amicus brief arguing that it does; the outcome has the potential to demonstrate that an equal rights amendment would render abortion restrictions unconstitutional.

Franke notes that with SCOTUS now including several justices who emphasize adherence to the literal text of the Constitution, having an explicit requirement for sex equality could prove decisive. So while the ERA wouldn’t literally insert the word “abortion” into the nation’s governing document, one could argue it does the next best thing.

Some have cautioned that the ERA runs the risk of being interpreted by SCOTUS as a requirement for “sex-blindness,” thereby blocking measures that single out women–even to help them. Franke argues the opposite, saying that adding sex explicitly to the Constitution would make quite clear the type of discrimination that needs to be eliminated.

She also points out that the amendment wouldn’t just affect abortion. The ERA, Franke says, would require that “federal, state, and local government take measures to eradicate structural sex discrimination from their policies and laws.” The Center is developing a slate of policy options for local and state officials touching on everything from pregnancy provisions to employment law. The amendment could also have important anti-discrimination benefits for queer and trans people.

So: how do we get an ERA victory?

Franke says there are a couple of paths. A case is currently working its way through the DC Circuit Court challenging the archivist’s decision. At the same time, the Senate is about to vote on lifting the time limit (the House has already voted to do so). Should that measure win bipartisan support, even if it fails to pass due to a filibuster, Franke argues that this offers sensible grounds for Biden to declare the ERA valid.

There’s no one simple trick to undoing abortion restrictions, and fighting back will require a mass movement of folks who protect clinics, help pregnant people get the health care they need (legally or not), and fight for measures like court reform and an end to the filibuster. But one thing is clear—the work that second-wave feminists did to get the ERA passed hasn’t been in vain. Building a movement around a constitutional amendment privy to judicial interpretation may not feel exciting—but I’m starting to think it should.

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