Dearest sherights community-

Thanks for the very warm welcome! I can’t wait to settle into my seat as Editor of sherights, and am excited for the feminist rock-and-roll to come.

I thought I would take a hot second to tell you about myself and how I got here — because there’s always a good story behind the journey, right?

I was a feminist in utero. My cells divided and I came out a kicking, screaming activist for women’s rights. I grew up on Take Back the Night marches and political news enthusiasm and social justice. In general, inequality makes me angry, and not just the gender kind. In the course of my 29 years, I’ve worked on access to healthcare, labour rights, youth participation, gender-based violence, and poverty. Basically, what it boils down to is that if there’s disparity, there’s a problem and there’s no such thing as doing too much to fix it.

My lovely co-Editor and I go back to the days when we sat in the great halls of Columbia University, expanding our brains with international human rights law parlance, gender theory, and United Nations 101. It sounds pretentious and obnoxious (and some of it was), but it meant that we got to hang out, and eventually found out that we both really like, well, women’s rights. We were even coined “The Gender Mafia,” but that’s a story for another day.

I’ve worked in sexual and reproductive health and rights for nearly a decade. Access to healthcare is the fulcrum around which I have organized my career, particularly for women and particularly access to sexual and reproductive health. If women don’t have control over their fertility or their sexual health, they don’t have control over much. It doesn’t get any more basic than that.

You’ll see some pieces from me on the following topics, about which I am extremely passionate:

• Abortion Rights – because I believe that, just as no one would claim that they have the right to tell you what’s up with your kidneys or your gall bladders, no one has the right to tell you what’s up with your uterus.
• Masculinity – because I think that dudes are part of the solution.
• Sexuality – because there’s a lot going on between the sheets, and we can’t pretend that it’s not political.
• The future of feminism – because who runs the world? Girls.
• Leaning in/having it all – because I’m still a little confused by that whole conversation and where it leaves Millennial women today.

I love comments. I love controversy. I love a good debate. Looking forward to all of it.

Thanks big time-

LMF

PS – Happy International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Join Patrick Stewart (one of my favourite feminist men) and Amnesty International in 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence.

Categories: News

Tags: Abortion, gender based violence, Human rights, LMF, sexual and reproductive health and rights, VAW