Ask a Feminist

This episode of Ask a Feminist looks at how the Trump administration’s attacks on women’s and gender studies, and universities more broadly, are affecting the production of feminist scholarship. The editors of four interdisciplinary feminist journals (Frontiers, Feminist Formations, Feminist Studies, and Signs) talk about the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that the Trump administration’s crusade against gender ideology is affecting how feminist knowledge is produced. They talk about how these new attacks on women’s studies, in combination with the longer-term crises facing the university, might reshape journals’ relationship with the field. Our guests are Debjani Chakravarty, Patti Duncan, and Jennifer C. Nash. Chakravarty is the coeditor (with Sarita Gaytán and Wanda Pillow) of Frontiers and associate professor of gender studies at the University of Utah. Duncan is the editor of Feminist Formations and professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Oregon. And Nash is the editorial director of Feminist Studies and is Jean Fox O'Barr Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University. Suzanna Walters of Signs facilitates the conversation.

This episode features a critical dissection of a political movement and philosophy that is unfortunately enjoying a global resurgence: pronatalism. Having successfully killed Roe, the Trump administration pursues policies incentivising certain groups to have more children. Many key administration figures—most prominently JD Vance and Elon Musk—are avid promoters of pronatalist worldviews, in which women’s efforts to exert control over their own reproductive capacities are portrayed as threats to “Western civilization” itself. This conversation offer a compelling deconstruction of the antifeminist underpinnings of pronatalism and explicates its historical links to nativism, eugenics, and other forms of racism.  Our interviewer for this episode is Signs Associate Editor Shoshanna Ehrlich, an expert on the legal regulation of reproduction and sexuality in the US and professor emerita of women's, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is joined by Nandita Bajaj and Michele Goodwin. Bajaj is the Executive Director of Population Balance, a US nonprofit that works to inspire narrative, behavioral, and systemic change that shrinks our human impact and elevates the rights and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet. Her research and advocacy work focuses on addressing the combined impacts of pronatalism and human expansionism on reproductive, ecological, and intergenerational justice. Michele is the Linda D. she is also the Executive Producer of Ms. Studios and host of the popular podcast: On The Issues With Michele Goodwin.

This episode focuses on the harassment and abuse that women—particularly women in politics—face online. Signs associate editor Sarah Sobieraj, an expert on US political culture and digital media, speaks with Professors Moya Bailey and Nina Jankowicz. The conversation delves into the strategies used by misogynists online, the racialized abuse faced by women of color, and the role that digital harassment and misinformation played in the 2024 election. And crucially, they emphasize that this abuse, at the systemic level, is a massive barrier to women’s equal political participation and functions to push women in general out of political discourse and even public life.  Moya Bailey is a professor of communication studies at Northwestern and is an expert on Black women’s digital resistance. She also coined the term “misogynoir.” Nina Jankowicz is the cofounder and CEO of the American Sunlight Project, a nonprofit focused on countering disinformation. She has advised governments, international organizations, and tech companies on the effects of disinformation, particularly on people from historically marginalized groups. And Sarah Sobieraj is a professor of sociology at Tufts University. Her latest book is Credible Threat: Attacks Against Women Online and the Future of Democracy.

For our first episode of the second Trump Administration, Carla Kaplan (chair of the Signs editorial board) speaks to Libby Adler and K.J. Rawson about the administration's anti-trans, anti-gender executive orders. While we’ve known for quite some time that the anti-trans attacks would be coming, their speed and breadth have still been breathtaking. Adler and Rawson tease out the implications of these executive orders and demonstrate what they reveal about the Trump regime’s understandings of sex and gender. Adler is Professor of Law and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and is the author of the book Gay Priori: A Queer Critical Legal Studies Approach to Law Reform from Duke University Press. And Rawson is Professor of English and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and the founder and director of the Digital Transgender Archive, an award-winning collection of trans-related historical materials.

Ask a Feminist is back after a long hiatus with an episode about the current state of public feminism! Signs editor Suzanna Walters is joined by Marcie Bianco and Andi Zeisler. Andi is the cofounder of Bitch Media and the author of the book We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrl to CoverGirl, and Marcie is the author of Breaking Free: The Lie of Equality and the Feminist Fight for Freedom. Their experiences writing and editing for feminist publics and building feminist platforms give them unique insights into the difficulties faced by those trying to reach or create feminist publics today. What happens when feminism becomes part of a “personal brand”? What are the pitfalls of anointing a few individuals as the public representatives of a movement as broad and diverse as feminism? Why do there seem to be so many feminist public intellectuals and so few feminist spaces?

Three esteemed feminist science-studies scholars—Sarah Richardson, Rene Almeling, and Natali Valdez—discuss reproduction in the age of epigenetics. They offer a critical appraisal of recent developments in the much-hyped field of epigenetics, particularly as those developments have focused on reproduction. Their discussion provides a crucial corrective as the biological sciences push for more epigenetic and high-tech approaches to reproductive health. Their feminist lens allows them to ask new questions and push back against scientific approaches that continue to place responsibility for managing reproductive risk onto individual women. They ask why these new epigenetic approaches—which even feminists had hoped might lead to more capacious or holistic understandings of reproduction—ultimately fail to live up to their own hype.

On this episode, Sandra McEvoy speaks to Jennifer Fluri about what the United States’s withdrawal from Afghanistan means for Afghan women and for the feminist movement in Afghanistan. Jennifer’s expertise as a geographer and her transnational feminist perspective are sorely needed in this perilous moment. As the withdrawal was under way, we heard familiar concerns--voiced by pundits and politicians--about the plight of Afghan women under the Taliban. But the broader context of the long US occupation, its effects on gender relations, and the history of women’s organizing in Afghanistan makes for a much more complicated picture, as you’ll hear. Jennifer--a professor of geography at University of Colorado Boulder who has worked in and on Afghanistan for almost twenty years--illuminates this complex history in this conversation with Sandra, who is clinical associate professor of political science at Boston University and a member of the Signs editorial board.

A conversation about the field of trans studies between V Varun Chaudhy and Susan Stryker. V is an assistant professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Brandeis and a member of the Signs board of associate editors. Susan is a founding editor of the journal TSQ and a major figure in the development of trans studies as a field. In the interview, they discuss the social and political context for the emergence trans studies, including its roots in feminist theory, and what its institutionalization (including the found of TSQ) has meant for the field. They also share insights about how trans feminism can combat new forms of transphobia, and, beyond that, how trans feminism can provide necessary tools for enacting new forms of sociality.

Patricia J. Williams, the renowned feminist theorist and legal scholar joins Carla Kaplan and Durba Mitra, two of the coeditors of the upcoming special issue of Signs on “Rage,” to talk about the multiple crises we face at the current moment, from Donald Trump’s cruel legacy of misogyny and racism to the failures of market-based approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic. They also discuss new forms of surveillance that have emerged during the pandemic and the disproportionate levels of emotional labor that particular groups, particularly black women, have been expected to take on throughout Trump’s presidency.

Activist, writer, and advocate Eesha Pandit and professor of English Paula Moya discuss the relationship between feminist scholarship and feminist activism, and how feminist activists and scholars can best support one another's work. What makes a good ally? How can we build systems of accountability among and between scholars and activists? How can we most productively use identity as the basis for organizing action? The conversation is facilitated by Signs editorial board chair Carla Kaplan and Signs editor in chief Suzanna Walters. Recorded live at the National Women's Studies Association Conference.

Byllye Avery, cofounder of the Black Women’s Health Imperative, speaks to historian Susan Reverby about her activist work, beginning in the 1970s, to increase women’s access to abortion. She discusses the state of reproductive rights before and after Roe v. Wade, the genesis of the “reproductive justice” movement, and the tactics that might be needed in a post-Roe future. Ask a Feminist is part of the Feminist Public Intellectuals Project, which provides a host of free feminist resources (http://signsjournal.org/fpip).