@signsjournal.org
The leading international journal in women's studies, Signs has since 1975 been at the forefront of new directions in feminist scholarship. | http://signsjournal.org | Published by @uchicagopress.bsky.social linktr.ee/signsjournal
Signs’s new Ask a Feminist on pronatalism examines the system of cultural, religious, and state pressures that turns reproduction into unpaid service to the nation, church, and market.
Well worth a listen
“This notion among pronatalists that there are certain communities that seem to be dying out: Now, that’s not actually the case… In the United States, you see this as being very much racialized, being packaged in white nationalism.” Read/listen to @michelebgoodwin.bsky.social‘s full analysis.
"Why and who would call [declining birth rates] a crisis? It’s the people who have relied for millennia on women’s reproductive labor to produce laborers, consumers, taxpayers, soldiers, religious followers." --Nandita Bajaj, Executive Director of @popnbalance.bsky.social
When billionaires warn that “civilization” will end if women have fewer children, we should ask: Whose civilization? Our guests Nandita Bajaj and @michelebgoodwin.bsky.social connect Musk-style panic to white nationalism, eugenics, and patriarchal control.
To kick off #WHM, we have a new Ask a Feminist on Pronatalism featuring Nandita Bajaj and @michelebgoodwin.bsky.social! What is pronatalism? What are its links to eugenic thinking? And why is it incompatible with feminism? Read/listen at the link!
In 2020, SIGNS released #BlackLivesMatter: Resources for the Uprising, a collection of articles on racism, the carceral state & antiracist feminist organizing. For #BHM, we hope it provokes thought about the past, present & the possibilities for an antiracist feminist future. signsjournal.org/blm/
“Black lesbian study is one genealogy, one praxis for sustaining a life-giving set of relations.” Olivia R. Polk's piece “Toward Black Lesbian Study" from “Lesbian Studies, Next” explores the vitality of Black lesbian writing traditions #BHM
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
Virginia C. Thomas' article “Black Feminist Aesthetics of Injection: Reframing Transition in Clarissa Sligh’s Wrongly Bodied" from “Lesbian Studies, Now” unpacks “an early Black feminist archive of bearing witness to a gender transition” #BHM
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
Megan Behrent's article “‘We Cannot Live Without Our Lives’: Art-Activism and the Struggle for Black Women’s Lives in Boston, 1979" dissects art “challenging the invisibility & silence around the lives and deaths of Black women” & political movements. #BHM www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/signs/cu...
The Winter 2026 SIGNS Journal issue is now available! This issue provides a rich commentary on the nature of feminist resistance informed by ethnographic research, including a special Ask a Feminist interview with Malala Yousafzai and her father. www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/signs/20...
@sorayachemaly.bsky.social: "The structure of thought of today’s backlash—its unremitting core—is a supremacist worldview based in biological determinism, social dominance hierarchy, and the free exercise of legitimized violence."
Thank you @signsjournal.org for the vital work you do and to @carmenriosss.bsky.social @profkori.bsky.social and @renee.bsky.social for your thoughtful (and humbling!) considerations of All We Want is Everything!
@carmenriosss.bsky.social: "The term ["male supremacy"] itself is a stark reminder that the lopsided nature of our lives is not an accident — that the discrimination we face is not a bug but a feature in a world built to maintain the power, dominance, and entitlement of men."
Check out Sally Kitch’s Feminist Frictions essay, “Forged in Fire: Constructing Women’s Studies Knowledge for Social Engagement, 1979-2019,” which reflects on the ways women’s studies intersects with (or diverges from) social activism. Read the full essay here: signsjournal.org/kitch/
@profkori.bsky.social: "When many Americans saw the achievements of marginalized groups and wanted to remind those groups of their 'proper' place of subordination, they elevated Donald Trump. They insisted that being a white man is what matters most. There’s no need to be admirable."
«Chemaly challenges feminists to think beyond gender equality, a frame she exposes as male supremacist. What kind of feminism champions women’s right to fit into the systems men have built? Instead, she encourages us to focus on building new models for shared prosperity, justice, human rights»
@renee.bsky.social: "All We Want Is Everything reads as a thought-provoking conversation with that astute friend who leaves you equipped to take on the world. [It's] anchored in stories—little vignettes of memories in Chemaly’s life or moments from the news cycle ripe for dissection and analysis."
@signsjournal.org put me in powerful company to discuss Soraya Chemaly’s incisive book ALL WE WANT IS EVERYTHING!
Read at signsjournal.org/soraya-chema...
New Short Takes! @renee.bsky.social, @carmenriosss.bsky.social, & @profkori.bsky.social discuss @sorayachemaly.bsky.social's All We Want Is Everything: How We Dismantle Male Supremacy! And Chemaly responds to the commentaries, expanding on the themes in her book. Check it out free!
Check out Anna Simone Reumert's article "Mama’s Maybe? Hierarchies of Migrant Kin-Making from Lebanon to Sudan" from “Lesbian Studies, Now." “[T]he migrant child is legally papa’s baby and mama’s maybe, but born undocumented in the eyes of the state.”
www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/signs/cu...
From GamerGate to today’s backlash against DEI, @jazzmyth.bsky.social discusses the ongoing cycles of antifeminist rage Cynthia Miller-Idriss charts in Man Up. Our latest Short Takes is here: buff.ly/AkS5W4D
@alexdibranco.bsky.social contextualizes Man Up as part of a necessary reckoning with misogyny within both right‑wing movements and the research fields that study them. Our new Short Takes, here: buff.ly/AkS5W4D
“Fighting extremism requires us...to get at the root of the problem by countering patriarchal assumptions and combating everyday discrimination, sexism, and gendered violence before more extreme forms of violence can grow.” Read more of Amy Farrell’s thoughts on Man Up here: buff.ly/AkS5W4D
“The book is less a catalog of bad actors than a cultural autopsy of a political formation that thrives on moral panic about gender itself.” @tristanbridges.bsky.social on men’s gendered resentment in our new Short Takes:
Signs’ new Short Takes on Man Up examines how patriarchal backlash, hostile sexism, and hypermasculinity converge to fuel contemporary violence. Check it out here! signsjournal.org/cynthia-mill...
Short Takes returns with reflections on @milleridriss.bsky.social’s Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism. Featuring @tristanbridges.bsky.social, Amy Farrell, @alexdibranco.bsky.social, and @jazzmyth.bsky.social. Available free on our website!
signsjournal.org/cynthia-mill...
Short Takes returns with reflections on @milleridriss.bsky.social’s Man Up: The New Misogyny and the Rise of Violent Extremism. Featuring @tristanbridges.bsky.social, Amy Farrell, @alexdibranco.bsky.social, and @jazzmyth.bsky.social. Available free on our website!
signsjournal.org/cynthia-mill...
“Trans studies is in...dialogue with processes of decolonization, of racial justice, of anti–global capitalism... it becomes a part of an overthrowing...of how these...pernicious systems of power root themselves in our flesh.” - Susan Stryker
Check out this Ask A Feminist Episode on Trans Feminisms!