News

For me, this was the year of the podcast. Whether waiting in an airport terminal or securely seated on a train, I was happy to temporarily retreat from the world and listen to folks speak for hour-long stints on a whole host of fascinating topics. Talk about an excellent way to pass the time – especially […]

Cinema, like all the arts, felt particularly urgent and necessary to me this past year. In the midst of all the sometimes overwhelming shock, rage and fear of 2017, these are the five films that most effectively grounded me back in my own humanity, helped me understand this particular moment in time, and made me remember […]

For what it’s worth (quite a lot, actually), there were moments of solace and triumph in the largely fetid swamp of 2017. For my money, 99% of those moments were born from the work, passion, and creativity of trans folks, the disabled community,* and people of color. I learned more and laughed harder this year than […]

In times of particularly intense struggle or hardship, people sometimes say that it’s difficult to see why film or TV or video games might matter. To me, it’s often times like this when the necessity of art in our lives becomes the clearest, and in 2017, I found television particularly important as a way of trying […]

NOTE: This piece references events that take place at the end of Stranger Things season two. I want to tell you about Eleven, and why she’s my favorite in a long line of young magical outsiders. I wonder, would she prefer I call her Jane now? Jane strikes me as too plain a name for her […]

SPOILERS: Super Mario Odyssey’s climax sees our hero Mario, who has made a 30-plus-year career out of rescuing Princess Peach, once again doing battle with Bowser to save her from his vile clutches. Okay, okay, you probably saw that coming, but just to be clear, this post discusses endgame story events in Super Mario Odyssey in […]

Happy fall, y’all! We’ve added a new recommendation to our list of nonfiction feminist media: Sara Ahmed’s newest book, Living a Feminist Life. Anita can’t put it down, and my copy is here beside me as I type, sitting in a spot of honor on my bedside table. As a long-time student of gender studies, I’ve […]

The original Blade Runner is a film without heroes, but to me, the most sympathetic characters have always been the four rogue replicants that Rick Deckard hunts down and kills over the course of the film. Designed for slave labor, their rebellion demonstrates a conviction that they deserve to freely exist just like the human beings […]

  The FemFreq team had a great weekend in Seattle at GeekGirlCon 2017, and we’ve got the pictures to prove it! We had a dynamite time getting to talk to long-standing FemFreq supporters, and meeting new folks who wanted to learn more about what we do. On Saturday, we held a panel called “Pop Culture Playback,” […]

  Our latest issue of the FREQ newsletter features an interview with the fascinating Ann Leckie, who wrote her critically-acclaimed and best-selling debut novel, Ancillary Justice, when she was a stay-at-home mom well into her 40s without any published work to her name. The novel explores a fantastical universe through the eyes of a sentient AI […]