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Amy Schumer quit ‘Barbie’ movie because it wasn’t ‘feminist and cool’ – Insider
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Pioneering Black feminist Dorothy Pitman Hughes dies at 84
NEW YORK (AP) — Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a pioneering Black feminist, child welfare advocate and lifelong community activist who toured the country speaking with Gloria Steinem in the 1970s and appears with her in one of the most iconic photos of the second-wave feminist movement, has died. She was 84.
Hughes died Dec. 1 in Tampa, Florida, at the home of her daughter and son-in-law, said Maurice Sconiers of the Sconiers Funeral Home in Columbus, Georgia. Her daughter, Delethia Ridley Malmsten, said the cause was old age.
Though they came to feminism from different places — Hughes from community activism and Steinem from journalism — the two forged a powerful speaking partnership in the early 1970s, touring the country at a time when feminism was seen as predominantly white and middle class, a divide dating back to the origins of the American women’s movement. Steinem credited Hughes with helping her become comfortable speaking in public.
In one of the most famous images of the era, taken in October 1971, the two raised their right arms in the Black Power salute. The photo is now in the National Portrait Gallery.
Hughes, her work always rooted in community activism, organized the first shelter for battered women in New York City and co-founded the New York City Agency for Child Development to broaden childcare services in the city. But she was perhaps best known for her work helping countless families through the community center she established on Manhattan’s West Side, offering day care, job training, advocacy training and much more.
“She took families off the street and gave them jobs,” Malmsten, her daughter, told The Associated Press on Sunday, reflecting on what she felt was her mother’s most important work.
Laura L. Lovett, whose biography of Hughes, “With Her Fist Raised,” came out last year, said in Ms. Magazine (of which Pitman was a co-founder along with Steinem) that Hughes “defined herself as a feminist, but rooted her feminism in her experience and in more fundamental needs for safety, food, shelter and child care.”
Born Dorothy Jean Ridley on Oct. 2, 1938, in Lumpkin, Georgia, Hughes committed herself to activism at an early age, according to an obituary written by her family. When she was 10, it said, her father was nearly beaten to death and left on the family’s doorstep. The family believed he was attacked by the Ku Klux Klan, and Hughes decided to dedicate herself to helping others through activism.
She moved to New York City in the late 1950s when she was nearly 20 and worked as a salesperson, nightclub singer and house cleaner. By the 1960s she had become involved in the civil rights movement and other causes, working with Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and others.
In the late 1960s, she set up her West 80th St. community center, providing care for children and also support for their parents.
“She realized that child-care challenges were deeply entangled with issues of racial discrimination, poverty, drug use, substandard housing, welfare hotels, job training and even the Vietnam War,” Lovett wrote last year. Hughes “recognized that the strongest anchor for local community action centered on children and worked to fix the roots of inequality in her community.”
It was at the center in 1968 that she met Steinem, who was then a journalist writing a story for New York Magazine. They became friends and, from 1969 to 1973, spoke across the country at college campuses, community centers and other venues on gender and race issues.
“Dorothy’s style was to call out the racism she saw in the white women’s movement,” Lovett said in Ms. “She frequently took to the stage to articulate the way in which white women’s privilege oppressed Black women but also offered her friendship with Gloria as proof this obstacle could be overcome.”
By the 1980s, Hughes was becoming an entrepreneur. She had moved to Harlem and opened an office supply business, Harlem Office Supply, the rare stationery store at the time that was run by a Black woman. But she was forced to sell the store when a Staples opened nearby, part of President Bill Clinton’s Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone program.
She would remember some of her experiences in the 2000 book, “Wake Up and Smell the Dollars! Whose Inner-City Is This Anyway!: One Woman’s Struggle Against Sexism, Classism, Racism, Gentrification, and the Empowerment Zone.”
Hughes was portrayed in “The Glorias,” the 2020 film about Steinem, by actor Janelle Monaé.
She is survived by three daughters: Malmsten, Patrice Quinn and Angela Hughes.
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AP National Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report.
South Korean presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol retracts interview comment he is a feminist
The Yoon campaign first blamed an unspecified administrative error, before telling one Korean news outlet that the campaign had released an incorrect version of its answer after internal debate on how to respond to The Post’s question about the candidate’s stance on feminism.
The fierce scrutiny of Yoon’s answer and the campaign’s scramble underscore the heightened sensitivities surrounding gender issues ahead of the election. In a neck-and-neck race, Yoon and liberal candidate Lee Jae-myung are working to win over voters in their 20s, who are considered a swing bloc and are deeply divided along gender lines.
Even as South Korea’s movement for women’s rights has gathered steam in recent years, an “anti-feminist” backlash has also grown, led by disaffected young men who are frustrated with a shrinking job market and see feminism as a conspiracy to take away their opportunities.
The anti-feminists have weaponized the term “feminist,” accusing people of “being femi,” like having a mental illness, or “doing femi,” like a harmful, mind-altering substance.
South Korea ranks last among developed countries when it comes to the role and influence of women in the workforce, according to data by the Economist’s “glass ceiling index” published Tuesday. While the unemployment rate among men in their 20s is higher than for their female counterparts, women drop out of the workforce faster in their 30s and 40s — a sign of their persistent lack of upward mobility once they are expected to have children and raise them.
With anger growing among many young men toward President Moon Jae-in’s policies to increase female participation in the workforce, the conservative party has appealed to them, promising to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and calling for a return to “meritocracy.”
By contrast, liberal candidate Lee has courted women in recent weeks, appearing at rallies with young female supporters and proposing changes such as protection for victims of sexual violence.
In a written interview conducted in Korean, The Post asked both candidates whether they consider themselves feminists. The Post also asked Yoon to respond to criticism that his policy proposals are viewed as discriminatory toward women.
The Yoon campaign’s initial response read: “I think there are many different ways to interpret feminism. As I said in a previous debate, feminism is a form of humanism, recognizing that gender discrimination and inequality is a reality and it is a movement to correct that. In that sense, I consider myself a feminist.”
After his answer went viral, the campaign cited an “administrative error” in providing the answer and circulated to Korean reporters the “original document” that it intended to send. In a statement to The Post on Tuesday, the campaign clarified that Yoon had not approved the answer, which was a “working-level error,” and apologized for creating confusion.
In his amended statement, Yoon said: “Gender-based division inevitably creates a blind spot for the weak person, and makes it harder to resolve the issues. Therefore, I will govern in a way that solves individuals’ problems, rather than grouping issues along gender lines.”
An anti-feminist activist posted the campaign’s explanation on Facebook, assuring his followers that Yoon did not betray men in their 20s and 30s by declaring himself a feminist.
A lawmaker with the liberal minority Justice Party, Jang Hye-yeong, who supports the third-party female candidate Sim Sang-jung, tweeted: “Dear candidate Yoon, feminism is not Voldemort,” referring to the Harry Potter villain who is so evil that people fear to say his name.
Lee, when asked whether he is a feminist, said: “I do not think that a word can clearly define views about a feminist or feminism. However, I can say that I am a gender-equalist. I stand against gender-based discrimination, including hatred. I also think that our society should present people with equal opportunities regardless of their gender.” He added that he wants to provide more opportunities for growth for both genders.