Over at Ebony.com, Jamilah Lemieux has a good summary of why Chuck Creekmur’s open letter to Nicki Minaj raises a number of red flags.

Creekmur, owner of AllHipHop.com, penned the letter in response to Minaj’s cover artwork for her next single, “Anaconda.” She’s sporting a thong and a pair of Air Jordan sneakers and… not much else aside from her tattoos. Her ass is on full display. Creekmur was disturbed. Not that he thought Minaj was being exploited or that she felt this highly sexualized image was distracting from her talent. He was concerned for his daughter. He wrote:

“I’m trying to raise a young girl that will eventually grow into someone greater than the both of us. I know that this requires great parenting, great education, great luck and an assortment of great influences. I’m sure you know the influence you wield, but now, if you told the “Barbs” to scratch my eyes out, some would attack without thinking about it. I’m sure some will also replicate the “Anaconda” image without thinking about it too. Your original image already has 256,817 (and counting) likes under the original Instagram picture you posted, so I venture that your average girl could strive to get a couple hundred likes from her friends. Is this the path you want to lead impressionable kids down?”

Ah, yes. The children. A concern we all should have. It’s something Lemieux herself talks about her response piece, noting that “certain things are cool for adults…who are mature enough to enjoy them” but with children whose ideas of sex and sexuality are barely formed, who’s to say. But she continues:

“As a still somewhat-new mother of a daughter, I didn’t share Creekmur’s fear that Minaj’s bare bottom is what forces young men to “sexualize girls at a young age.” Instead, I was annoyed that once again, a man has suggested that the onus of behaving ‘respectably’ should be placed on the shoulders of a woman, while men and boys pretty much get a free pass to do whatever we ‘let’ them do. Because surely, they require our permission to “sexualize” us, right?”

It’s an old problem. It would be disastrous if the only images of women available to us were ones in which they are presented as sexual objects. We are fighting an uphill battle to bring some sense of balance. But I also notice the reaction to Minaj as a particular problem among black women performers. It happens whenever Beyonce performs or Rihanna steps outside. Its happened when Betty Davis wore hotpants and Left Eye wore condoms as eye patches. Whenever black women own their sense of sexuality and it appears to not be controlled by the hetero-male gaze, the whole world gets into a tizzy.

Creekmur didn’t write his letter after seeing the hundreds and thousands of women who have been featured in hip-hop music videos over the years, wearing about the same amount of clothing (or less) than Minaj. He didn’t write it after all the anthems centered around hetero-male pleasure that disregard the fact that, hey, maybe the woman you’re with would like to enjoy sex, too. He didn’t write a letter to Miley Cyrus about her exploitation of stereotypical images of black women’s bodies. Creekmur’s letter came when Minaj, seemingly independent of any man’s input, decided to embrace her own body and sexual image. It isn’t meant for him or for his daughter. It’s hers.

That’s a scary thought in a world where black women’s bodies are meant for our consumption but only on the terms which everyone who isn’t a black women gets to dictate. When that isn’t the case, when a black woman decides to take back her body and still hold her sexuality dear and flaunts it but not for us, that flies in the face of all of our established norms. The Creekmurs of the world reach for the souls of Maya Angelou and Ruby Dee to shame these women for not being as respectable as our fallen heroes. But, ya know, so long as someone else is in control that isn’t a black woman, let the asses fly.

I don’t know if Minaj’s cover artwork is appropriate for kids to be exposed to. Certainly it depends on age, level of maturity, familiarity with sex and concepts of autonomy, so on and so forth. What I will say is that she isn’t responsible for having those conversations with every one of the children in the world who may see that image. If it’s truly of that much concern to Creekmur and other dads who may feel compelled to write a letter, they should maybe start talking to their children about sex, sexuality, body image, and the like, instead of trying to police away every sexual image on earth.

But, that’s exactly my issue. Creekmur isn’t trying to do away with all sexual images. This has only come up when a black woman has presented herself independently of the hetero-male gaze (something he was sure to note when saying “As a man, I can appreciate the virtues of your perfect posterior” because, you know, it’s really important what he thinks about her body). If black women aren’t allowed to own their sexuality, then who does it belong to?

Mychal Denzel Smith is a Knobler Fellow at The Nation Institute.

Citing the Hobby Lobby ruling, the Satanic Temple is claiming a religious exemption from the anti-choice “informed consent” laws that require abortion providers in 35 states to give out biased, sometimes false, information about the procedure.

Given that “the Supreme Court has decided that religious beliefs are so sacrosanct that they can even trump scientific fact,” the Temple says it expects its “deeply held belief” will be respected. After all, unlike Hobby Lobby’s, their belief is even based on actually accurate information. 

And you don’t need to be an official Temple member to claim this exception too. “All women who aren’t member share our deeply held belief that their personal choices should be made with access to the best available information, undiluted by biased or false information, are free to seek protection with this exemption,” a spokesperson say. Why yes, in fact, I do — I share that belief very much.

The Temple has helpfully provided a letter that people seeking an abortion can print out to explain to their doctor that they are exempt from informed consent mandates:

I regard any information required by state statute to be communicated or offered to me as a precondition for an abortion (separate and apart from any other medical procedure) is based on politics and not science (“Political Information”). I regard Political Information as a state sanctioned attempt to discourage abortion by compelling my consideration of the current and future condition of my fetal or embryonic tissue separate and apart from my body. I do not regard Political Information to be scientifically true or accurate or even relevant to my medical decisions. The communication of Political Information to me imposes an unwanted and substantial burden on my religious beliefs.

I don’t know about you, but the Temple, a relatively young sect with an already rich history of trolling religious conservatives, might have just gotten a new convert.

Maya believes “one’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.”

Years ago, my doctor prescribed oral contraceptives after I was hospitalized from a ruptured ovarian cyst. I had insurance through my employer at the time and paid a modest monthly copay of $10. When we switched insurance plans during an enrollment period, my coverage lapsed and I had to pay out of pocket for the medication. The snafu was quickly resolved but it was important information, a quick glimpse of the kind of expense I’d incur if I didn’t have a job, or the kind of job that would allow me to contact someone without taking time off work or fearing retribution from my employer to resolve the matter. I worked really long hours then, probably about 80 and at busy season, longer. My compensation included health insurance coverage.

I’ve been curious since this preposterous case where Hobby Lobby refused to comply with ACA’s contraceptive mandate was elevated to the nation’s high court (and now with Monday’s devastating decision) – what kind of fringe costs did these employers fear they’d incur from ACA? How does the mathematics of the exemption of health care costs for female employees inform their bottom line? When you consider how low wages are for retail employees, could it possibly be that the argument that ACA’s new rules would be an undue financial burden for a business as large as Hobby Lobbby, wouldn’t hold water? That’s just the cost of doing business, right? The market could figure this out. Yet, when non-profit faith based organizations sought their exemption from ACA’s contraceptive mandate, we witnessed the advent of the religiously sentient corporate entity, wrapped in the body of Hobby Lobby owner, David Green.

ACA was affirmed the law of the land in 2012, but these incremental, tenacious challenges that we’ve witnessed for the past two years – whether it’s congress seeking to repeal it on loop, GOP ruled states refusing Medicaid expansion or challenges of religious liberty of your employer – have been an incredible mix of powerful men seeking to restrict the lives of not only of women, but poor women and poor people.

Maybe this is simply a war on poor women.

Depending on how other closely held private corporations seek to use the Hobby Lobby decision to deprive female employees medically effective contraceptive health care, what we can expect to see is a disproportionate affect on poor women and sadly, poor women of color.

In Ebony, Elizabeth Dawes Gay outlines anticipated impacts the ruling has for black women:

Black women may rely on contraception to treat endometriosis, manage uterine fibroids, and quell PMS symptoms. Many others rely on it simply to prevent or space pregnancy which can be lifesaving for Black women, who are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than our white counterparts. For us, and so many women across the world, birth control is a matter of health and life. Allowing for-profit employers to deny contraceptive coverage to employees who work hard for their health care coverage makes accessing contraception more difficult and could very well impact the health and well-being of women across the nation.

In 2011, more than half of Black people were covered by private (usually employer-sponsored) health insurance, either through their own employer or that of a family member, and 57 million adult women of all races were covered through employer-sponsored insurance. If the behavior of companies like Hobby Lobby becomes the norm rather than the exception, it could impact contraceptive access for millions of people in the U.S. and have a disproportionate impact on Black women who, with lower income and wealth on average, may not be able to afford to pay for their contraception out-of-pocket.”

In Colorlines, former Feministing editor Miriam Perez reiterates Justice Ginsberg’s concern in her scathing dissent, noting that, “Women of color are more likely to be low-income, and also more likely to work a minimum wage job…. getting an IUD could cost as much as an entire month’s rent working at the minimum wage…Women of color who are already struggling to make ends meet may face increased burdens. That could mean doing things like splitting one pack of pills between two women each month, as Kimberly Inez McGuire reports two Latina women living in South Texas have been doing.”

Irin Carmon also points to an amicus brief from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that notes, “Lack of insurance coverage deters many women from choosing a high-cost contraceptive, even if that method is best for her health and lifestyle, and may result in her resorting to a method that places her more at risk for medical complications or improper or inconsistent use.” Moreover, the savings for women under the contraceptive coverage mandate from August 2012 yielded “an average of $269 per woman, according to a recent report by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, or $483 million total in 2013.”

Social conservatives can hide steep their logic in junk science and feign concern over the morality of women sexual autonomy, but they’re erasing the economic and health realities of women of color.

Poor women are burdened with all the economic consequences of sex and barriers to reproductive health and autonomy. The freedom of Christian values is to pay women low wages and shame them for seeking medical coverage that helps them determine their economic futures.

Previously: In the wake of the Hobby Lobby ruling, what happens next?

Syreeta McFadden lives, writes, reads in Brooklyn.

A new study, conducted by the Equal Rights Center and Freedom to Work, compared the responses to 100 pairs of fictional applications for jobs with government contractors. Each pair included an “LGBT application” that listed experience at an LGBT organization, and a “non LGBT application” that names similar roles in organizations that are not LGBT-focused. It played out something like this:

“‘Jennifer’ and ‘Michelle’ filled out applications for a job as an administrative assistant at ExxonMobil. The applications show they attended the same high school and college but ‘Jennifer’ had better grades in both schools and a stronger work history. ExxonMobil calls ‘Michelle’ for an interview — twice. She does not respond. They follow up with an email, stating they’ll hold the position for her. She does not respond. They never call ‘Jennifer’ and they hired someone else.”

Using results from all of the pairs, the study concluded that applicants who had roles in LGBT organizations were 23 percent less likely to be called back for an interview, even if they were more qualified for the position. 

The study targeted eight federal contractors including ExxonMobil, whose shareholders have repeatedly voted against a resolution to protect employees from LGBT discrimination. The other contractors were AmerisourceBergen Corp., the Babcock & Wilcox Co., Fluor Corp., General Electric Co., L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., Supreme Group Holding SARL, and URS Corp.

The debate over ENDA has pushed LGBT employment discrimination to the forefront. Americans being asked to think about LGBT rights outside of the parameters of marriage and morality (finally). With that being said, I wonder what is implied by one’s role at an LGBT organization. Beyond the assumption that one actually identifies as LGBT, I wonder if corporations consider working at an LGBT organization to pose a threat because it connotes a heightened sensitivity to LGBT issues, a stronger responsibility to seek fair and just treatment, lesser willingness to look the other way in the event that LGBT discrimination occurs, and access to individuals/groups/organizations that can support them. In other words, are companies more afraid to hire LGBT-identified people or LGBT activists who could possibly blow their spot up with LGBT discrimination cases?

I’d be interested to see some variation of this study that perhaps included cover letters. In this way some fictional applicants may be able to identify themselves as LGBT (and where they fit under the umbrella) without an organizational affiliation. Either way, employment discrimination still represents a real barrier to LGBT communities.

Sesali gets satisfaction knowing that her fellow rebel rousers are still scaring the hell out of oppressors.

We'll start with the obvious: Nika Danilova's voice is an elemental, powerful thing. It doesn't take long for listeners to use "force of nature." Her output as Zola Jesus has been something of a parable of humanity's instinct to control and corral nature—whether it was the lo-fi production of her earliest work, the focused pop structures of Stridulum, Conatus' muted electronics, or their orchestral reworkings on Versions. 

Occasionally, Danilova will collaborate with populist electronic producers, like Orbital and M83, who challenge her by going in the opposite direction, putting that same voice within the context of expansive, expensive tracks. "New France" and "Intro" have been two of her most satisfying recordings to date, and "Dangerous Days" gives the impression that Danilova might not see pop as the path of least resistance anymore. She hasn't altered her approach much from Conatus, and she doesn't need to; her performances have never been subtle, and the result on "Dangerous Days" recasts an archetypical Zola Jesus song as an electro-pop banger of gothic grandeur. Danilova has suggested the title of her upcoming LP Taiga let her spiritually commune with her Russian heritage—in going home, she's gone big.

This weekend was the first weekend that it felt straight HOT in the northeast. Tropical lady that I am, I can’t get enough of the hot weather, and I was taking full advantage by wearing shorts, my femme shark crop top, ball cap, hoops, and gold high tops. So yeah, I was slaying. But it seems like the first weekend a girl can show some skin is some kind of street harasser holiday. Harassers come out of hibernation mad hungry for exerting their power over you in public, and this weekend was no different.

Femininity is a special kind of target on the streets. Now, I know that more masculine-presenting women and gender non-conforming folks get street harassed plenty too. I was with my more masculine-presenting girl this weekend, and we were both targeted. But femininity is so often conflated with powerlessness, so often painted as inferior, so often the target of street harassment.

So I want to dedicate this playlist to the femmes. To those of us who find power in our femininity – however that may look, in whatever genders and bodies it may live. To those of us who resist the patriarchy in a bold lip, and those whose thickly-lined eyes shoot daggers at the creeps. To those whose bold femininity both gives us life at the same time that it risks it. This is for you. For us. Turn it up.

Verónica believes in the power of femmes.

If you’re not hip to Junglepussy yet, the time to get up to speed is right now. Unapologetically sexual, proudly black and West Indian, and with unmatched swag, Junglepussy has been releasing tracks here and there and making cameos in the videos of Feministing Jamz faves Dai Burger and Le1f. Now, she’s finally here with a debut album.

Satisfaction Guaranteed came out Tuesday, and y’all: it is off the hook. A few of these tracks have been released over the past year and have already been on my personal rotation (ahem, Picky Bitch Checklist), but this album brings it with great new tracks as well, and in addition to shouting out women who’ve been important to her (Brandy, Foxy, Kim, Patra, Erykah), Junglepussy’s throwing us gems throughout. “It’s a full time job fucking loving yourself.” “Fuck a petition, listen, let the revolution begin.” “What’s a girl to do when the world is against you? Throw it in they face, let ‘em know that you meant to.”

These jams are what summer dance parties are made of. Get into it.

Verónica is a picky bitch too.

If you asked me a week ago what Mike Skinner, Jarvis Cocker, and Bruce Springsteen have in common, I might've told you that in my younger, more impressionable days, I found each's depiction of a blue-collar life I will never experience to be extremely meaningful and worthy of devotion. Also, I haven't listened to any of them in years. And yet, here's Real Lies' stunning single "North Circular", which somehow manages to evoke all three—the rambling, passionate prose-poetry of vintage Springsteen filtered through Cocker's deadpan, the kind where he's working out in realtime whether he has a secret he should keep to himself. This is laid over a light club beat that, like the Streets' "Weak Become Heroes", recalls a specific era of drug-taking, but not as clearly as a general "better times," of something youthful and pure lost to the passage of time.

Although he was just named one of the twelve artists in this year's XXL freshman class, the latest track from Vic Mensa can barely be considered a rap song. The Chicago rapper makes great use of his nimble mercury-slicked flow on "Down on My Luck", removing the spaces between words so that they tumble into each other like dominoes, but with its soft neon fog and translucent chords, the song could've slotted onto the back half of Settle—last year's breakout debut from Disclosure—without raising any eyebrows.

In fact, even though he's recently been on tour with the UK dance duo, it's the restlessness of last year's Innanetape that helps contextualize "Down on My Luck" as a natural extension of Mensa's omnivorous musical appetite rather than a hard—and cynical—left turn. It also doesn't hurt that the track nails the propulsive throb of deep house and comes equipped with an earworm of a hook that suggests Mensa might have a career in him as a dance vocalist if this rapping thing doesn't pan out.

"I kept explaining I was too tired to continue to speak," Andrew Savage mumbles heavily on "Instant Disassembly". You might recognize this feeling: You might've said something like this yourself, sunk into a chair and feeling the sudden accumulation of a night's drinking, like someone is pressing down on your skull with a hardcover dictionary. Parquet Courts usually report from the opposite end of the energy spectrum, their songs zipping along like dune buggies piloted by eighth graders. But on "Disassembly," they sound both exhausted. It is a downright Stonesy rock ballad, built on numb-fingered power-chord strumming  and an insistent but splintered guitar lead.  Savage calls up the languor of the music in the lyrics, which pop off the surface like sweat beads on a Heineken: "The last classic rock band's last solid record creeps in/ A call out of the blue from an old, old friend." Parquet Courts have always been a smart band, one with insightful things to say about themselves and others, but they've never sounded this emotionally open before.

What are you supposed to do with a song like this? You can't gaze directly at it. You certainly can't cook dinner to it.  How do you interact with it?  You have to shut the door, close the browser window, stare at your hands. Sharon Van Etten sings like someone throwing a dirt clod in your face, and on "Your Love Is Killing Me", she performs violence on your ability to maintain composure. The song title is the sentiment: "Break my leg so I can't walk to you/ Cut my tongue so I can't talk to you/ Burn my skin so I can't feel you/ Stab my eyes so I can't see." It is about as understated and shaded as an I-Beam to the face.

On "Your Love is Killing Me", her singing is so tremendously powerful it trembles at the edge of intelligibility. Listen to the way she sings "Your love is killing me"—almost all of the hard consonants disappear from the words, and they become a howl. It is, frankly, knee-buckling. The ability of a human voice to induce this weakness  is one of the most profound and mysterious things music can do. When it happens, you go quiet, just for a moment. After it's over, the machines start whirring again as you attempt to explain to yourself where your faculties just went.

While both Robyn and Röyksopp have recorded their fair share of indomitable tracks on a solo basis, their song-length collaborations have all shared the same crackling energy and sinewy muscularity. Junior showstopper “The Girl and the Robot” used volatile, charging electronics to transform a lonely partner into a wrathful spirit; Body Talk Pt. 1’s “None of Dem” did the same thing with ennui, with Robyn riding its chilly dancehall like an ice princess. “Do It Again” is the title track from their forthcoming collaborative mini-album (due May 26 on Cherrytree/Interscope), and it proudly follows in the footsteps of the tracks mentioned above: this is hard-driving electro-pop nonpareil, with synths that bloom and move against eardrums like smooth, cold steel and a lyric that explores the joy, and pain, of repetition with surprising nuance.

The key is Robyn, who will make an incredible spin class instructor if she ever gets tired of pop music: she keeps platitudes from sounding stale and grants the bridge an unexpected melancholy, dragging the song from the dancefloor to the quiet bedroom. This could’ve been the musical equivalent of jamming the speed button on the treadmill until it can’t go any faster, and it would’ve been fine; Robyn takes us inside the mind of the runner, and tells us why they’re running.

(Image via)

I figured the gender wage gap in babysitting had to be the earliest wage gap out there. But Bryce Covert has uncovered an even earlier one:

Nearly 70 percent of boys say they get an allowance, compared to just under 60 percent of girls, according to a new survey from Junior Achievement.

But unfortunately, it’s not likely because boys do more chores. One study found that girls do two more hours of housework a week than boys, while boys spend twice as much time playing. The same study confirmed that boys are still more likely to get paid for what they do: they are 15 percent more likely to get an allowance for doing chores than girls. A 2009 survey of children ages 5 to 12 found that far more girls are assigned chores than boys. A study in Europe also found fewer boys contribute to work around the house.

And it’s not just that boys are more likely to be paid by their parents, but they also get more money. One study found that boys spent just 2.1 hours a week on chores and made $48 on average, while girls put in 2.7 hours to make $45. A British study found that boys get paid 15 percent more than girls for the same chores.

Obviously, compared to pay inequity in the adult working world, the stakes of the allowance gap aren’t all that high. But in terms of socialization, I think it tells us a lot. Since allowances exist in this fuzzy gray area — some kids don’t get them at all, some get them loosely as “payment” for chores, some get them just for being a kid as an early entitlement program – this gap reveals a lot about how sexist norms around gender and unpaid labor are perpetuated, starting from a very young age. 

The research Bryce points to illustrates a few different dynamics at play here beyond just the fact that boys are more likely to get an allowance than girls. There’s the fact that, regardless of the payment factor, girls are assigned more chores than boys in general, which teaches both to view housework as “naturally” women’s responsibility, and contributes to the housework gender gap that only worsens as they grow up and have families of their own. And there’s the fact that when payment is given for chores, girls get less than boys for the same tasks — a nice little preview of the blatant pay discrimination they may face as adults in the workforce.

But it’s the fact that boys are more likely to get an allowance for chores that really speaks to the complicated way sexism determines how labor is valued under capitalism. As Bryce notes, ”Asking girls to do more chores without paying them teaches both genders that women are meant to do unpaid work.” And if they are meant to do it, it will not be seen as a work at all. It will be duty or responsibility or love — unless a guy does it and then it will become worthy of compensation.

This is the magical alchemy of patriarchy: labor that is devalued when done by women becomes valued when done by men.

One of the linked studies provides some clues to how this works. Boys got more money putting in less time on chores, because “parents divided jobs along gender lines, with boys more likely to mow lawns, wash cars and take out the bins. Girls were assigned indoor chores, such as cleaning bedrooms, washing up and doing laundry.” Clean laundry, of course, is no less necessary to the household than a neatly trimmed lawn, but somehow the masculine-coded chores just happen to “have a higher monetary value.” I can’t imagine why.

So this particular gap is not just about pay disparities. It’s about how we reproduce a capitalist culture that refuses to account for women’s unpaid household labor and systemically devalues any of the important work — like domestic work and care work — that women have traditionally done for free.

Maya would like to bring back the Wages for Housework movement. 

Arriving late on Honest, "Benz Friendz" is Future's reminder to us: This captivating AutoTune alien-unicorn guy, about whose not-a-rapper weirdness we enjoy rhapsodizing? He's a member of the Dungeon Family. We knew this, somehow, but "Benz Frenz" foregrounds it firmly, bringing Organized Noize and Three Stacks, with both of his feet planted in the recording studio and eyes locked with ours, to hammer the point home. Keith Murphy already observed it at VIBE, but "Benz Friendz" feels more like a new Outkast song than anything in six or seven years. Future opens by imprinting the rat-tat-tat rhythm of "graduated from the fabricated sabotages" directly onto your cerebral cortex, lacing his scolding verse with some inspired silliness: "Let's have a heart-to-heart; drink wine, make art."

And Andre? Well, who knows how many of these perfectly formed verses he sees when he closes his eyes. He begins somewhere bitter ("Fly on a n***a back while he Superman/But if I'm in a wheelchair, you still there?") and then dials out to storytelling details ("Had to write her birthday down because my memory sucks/But this shit come back up like some acid reflux") and philosophical musings ("I might not never buy a new car again, if I can help it/Cuz if buy one they will sell ten, and what I'm left with") with all the observable effort of a stretch and a yawn.