It’s still Election night as I’m writing this post and I’m already feeling a deep sense of disappointment and existential dread. Results from the election are too close to call and we may not know until the end of the week what they are, but what I do know is that it shouldn’t have been this close — period.

Unprecedented early voting results signaled the likelihood that we would have historic, record-breaking numbers of voters engaged in civic participation. That’s positive; I’ll give you that. …

There’s a lot being written and said these days about the “Future of Work” — what the world will look like and require from us in order to adapt successfully as organizations, cultures, and people. In most of the scholarship emerging about this area, it is clear that we will all need to reconsider how we define success as a company, how we build and motivate teams, and how we stay connected, inspired, and open to inevitable change. COVID-19 and the past seven months has brought new relevance and urgency to this directive.

As a feminist consultant and founder, my work is mostly remote and my clients are mostly distributed and asynchronous. Just the logistics alone requires that I have a toolkit at my disposal that can coordinate all of the minutiae associated with multiple goals and deadlines to keep track of my daily grind. While most entrepreneurs and parents these days may have access to a wide range of apps, websites, and other tricks to boost productivity, I’d like to offer these eight books as an essential framework for keeping the big picture in the foreground. They will help you better identify and shape your values, organize your thoughts, and execute on your vision. …

I’ve not been watching the confirmation hearings because I’ve had my share of it back in the 1990s when I was first exposed to the double excoriation of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings, where Senate Republicans weaponized both race and gender against her to secure the confirmation of an accused and likely sexual predator. …

If you’ve been anxiously doom scrolling and following every twist and turn of events that may impact the results of our upcoming election, you probably convinced yourself you should watch last week’s Vice Presidential debate. Unlike the first Presidential debate which was wrought with more obvious blitz of syncopated jabs, pokes, and hurtles, from Trump to Biden — a demonstration of the ‘Pitbull’ archetype — in this debate, Mike Pence showed us the ‘Cobra,’ the other version in the coercive controller typology.

In her book, See What You Made Me Do, Australian journalist Jess Hill explains the work of Doctors John Gottman and Neil Jacobson, whose 1995 study on domestic abusers identified a set of behaviors that is characterizes a coercive controller — stemming from the desire to dominate their partner using a variety of tactics including isolation, micromanaging their daily behaviors, humiliation, and degradation. …

*Trigger warning for anyone with suicidal ideation.*

Recently, a publicist reached out to me to promote the film, “By Design: Secrets Can Kill,” newly released on Amazon Prime, allegedly exploring the theme of domestic abuse. As a survivor with a weekly podcast using gender as a lens to examine power and gender-based violence, I frequently receive these kinds of requests. I reluctantly agreed to check out the film, mostly because October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, hoping it would be something I could recommend.

Past experience with mainstream productions depicting such themes, including Big Little Lies, has been disappointing, and often, harmful — in their inaccuracy, reinforcement of sexist myths, and/or failure to consult with experts in the field so that abuse tactics and its impact are rooted in known power dynamics, rather than bias. Unfortunately, my instincts from a brief glance of the film’s flyer and viewing of the trailer proved disappointingly precise. Not only did the film meet, but it also exceeded my worst expectations of gender stereotyping about women, victim-blaming, and then some. The main reason I’m writing about the film is as an exercise of what not to do ( please). …

One hour before Tuesday’s Presidential Debate, my phone started pinging with texts in anticipation. It didn’t take long before these exchanges started making me feel anxious and agitated — the same feeling of dread that I get when I know I will be seeing my abuser — during one of his visits with our son or the night before we are due in court due to a sixteen year family court saga he has perpetuated. …

Or, how not to freak out about the next 37 days

We knew this was coming. Every time our breaking news alerts informed us that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg checked in or out of the hospital for her latest bout with cancer, our hearts stopped ever so slightly considering the possibility she was letting out her last gasp of breath. For many of us, Justice Ginsburg defiance of medical odds led us to embrace the illusion/delusion? that she was immortal and that it would be her choice when she decided to step down and retire. Well, we were wrong.

And now we have to face the consequences of our collective inertia. Since her death last week my inbox is flooded with multiple reminders every day of the urgency of calling our elected officials and begging them to choose reason over partisanship, collective well-being over individual self-interest and greed, basic human decency over sociopathic delight in exercising cruelty. It’s pointless. …

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This publication extends the work we do for survivors, advocates and pro-feminist allies to engage in knowledge-sharing and knowledge building. We hope to use this platform to uplift survivor voices and stories. By cultivating a gendered power lens, we hope to provide readers with a toolkit for interrogating power, privilege, and oppression, and for building a cultural literacy around abuse and abuse of power so that we can better identify it, confront it, prevent it and heal from it.

As such, we seek pieces that are intersectional in nature — that span culture, history, politics, and make visible the interconnectedness of our lives and of the systems that contribute to upholding systemic power structures at the expense of liberation, autonomy, and collective thriving for ourselves and for our communities. Submissions that are fact and evidence-based, science and reason centered, and trauma-informed will be reviewed with thoughtful consideration. …