Fig & Olive

In a study measuring sexual arousal, heterosexual women were found to be equally aroused by gay, lesbian and heterosexual sexual scenarios —some would call this “sexual fluidity”. Interesting enough most of the women still said they were mostly aroused by the heterosexual sexual scenarios. Why would this cognitive dissonance exist? The LGBT community would like […]

In Islam, unlike in Christianity, God is neither a literal man nor a metaphorical male. God is never referred to as ‘father’ but we do have to grapple with the same masculine third person singular that, for some, is problematic. In the Chapter titled, The Iron, God says, “It is He who created the heavens […]

What was the purpose of Halima Aden’s inclusion in Sports Illustrated, Swimsuit Edition? Was it to show that ‘Muslim women can be sexy too’ or that, ‘Modesty is sexy too’ or simply that, ‘Muslim women can be in Sports Illustrated too’. Muslim women have been on the quest for ‘too’ ever since we were made […]

Being 30 and childless I don’t take this information lightly, but I’ve come to appreciate truth over feel-good rhetoric. The reality is, the previous generation of women, and our society at large, has failed us. They told us that we could be just like the boys, that our twenties were for going to school, making […]

I spoke to Imam Dawud Walid of CAIR-MI over the weekend about sacred activism and the limits of ‘woke’ culture for our podcast episode on the subject, which will be released this week, inshaAllah. Part of our discussion covered the issue of Adab in activism. A subject that can feel deeply uncomfortable to some in […]

Maria Belsky is the co-writer of ‘Handmaid’s Tale: The Musical’ but she is probably best known for her Twitter thread (and Twitter handle) on ‘Headless women’ in Hollywood. The thread lines up the worst examples of movie posters that use women’s bodies while ‘cutting off’ their heads. The images are perturbing but what does a […]

Women have a conflicting relationship with equality. On one end we want to be equal to men. We want the same opportunities, even splitting of household chores and equal share of childcare, or so we claim. Women have had, since the beginning of the ‘equality project’ one foot towards equality and one foot towards differential […]

Recently there was an article about the inheritance law in Islam and the effort among some Muslim women to do away with it. My initial reaction was disappointment with the Muslim Feminists in their lack of acknowledging that within a larger Islamic context the unequal share of inheritance Muslim women get is balanced out by […]

Despite having grown up in a decent black neighborhood, many of my peers lived in female-led households. That absence wasn’t born out of the woman’s choice to lead but a set of unfortunate circumstances that left them in that predicament. While doing research on housewives I was saddened but not shocked that only 8% of […]

Because the imaginary of black women (and black people in general) is so limited in the media, every image takes on a crucial importance and is forced to be taken a lot more seriously than entertainment ever should be. Black Panther is one of the first movies of its kind, scale and reach to feature […]