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Broad-minded media. Smart, provocative news & opinions. Incisive. Irreverent. Curious. Provocative. That's DAME.

We take an unabashed look at the issues our readers are really talking about. And like our readers, DAME is smart, quick-witted, opinionated and unapologetic. Recalling the golden age of women’s magazines, DAME boasts an enviable roster of some of the best voices of our time. Authoritative, seasoned writers breaking stories; crafting eloquent, moving essays; offering expert advice; and weighing in

on the conversations of the moment with their unique takes on relationships, gender politics, s*x, entertainment, the arts, business, politics, Internet culture, health and everything in-between.

30/07/2024

Trump’s ghoulish VP pick, JD Vance, is awful at selling the GOP’s terrifyingly regressive platform.

He’s even worse at taking potshots at VP Harris and her exciting presidential campaign.

Early last year, I said goodbye to my beloved Whiskey Bearcat, a delightfully tubby tabby. I met him as a kitten, in 2005, during the week that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Whiskey was one of hundreds of animals that had been evacuated from Louisiana to Dallas, Texas, in advance of the devasta...

25/07/2024

Voters want a steady hand at the wheel who not only knows how to course-correct on our country’s deeply problematic past, but offers a hopeful vision on how to navigate our very complex future.

We have a perfect candidate in VP Harris, a Black South Asian woman with an excellent résumé who absolutely can win the presidency in 2024. Here's why.

18/07/2024

While we have been wrapped up in the top tier headlines, the Supreme Court has awarded itself expansive powers over the structure and impact of federal authority; the administrative state has shriveled into a mere suggestion, and routine budget negotiations have become catastrophic clashes.

The problems with the system have become more dire in recent weeks, but have persisted at different levels of dysfunction for years to the point where failure is more normal than success.

The available answer—sold by the press and the campaigns they cover—will be the choice between an autocratic former president Donald Trump and the pro-democracy President Biden. The answer we will actually need is Congress.

The campaign hasn't been able to devote much attention to this lately—it has been a chaotic and alarming few weeks between dismal debate performances and attempted assassinations—but the United States government is completely broken. While we have been wrapped up in the top tier headlines, the S...

16/07/2024

Legacy media is (again) determined to legitimize a convicted criminal and undermine the candidacy of an effective president for the sake of clickbait—and at the risk of dooming a nation's democracy.

Nothing that happens to Trump can be anything but great for Trump...If he delivers a speech without digressing into open racism, he’s adopting a “new tone,” no matter how short-lived that tone is.

After a June debate in which Biden stumbled against a relentlessly dishonest Trump, it was Biden’s age and apparent unfitness—and not Trump’s promise to suspend the Constitution and subvert American democracy—that became the focus of the media.

And this kind of disparity in coverage does immense damage every day.

In the wake of an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a campaign event in Pennsylvania, the usual media suspects fell all over themselves to praise Trump’s political acumen in not dying, and quote anonymous Democrats declaring the election over and Trump victorious. Nothing t...

09/07/2024

Zombie laws, such as the one that paved the way for Roe to be overturned, could easily reverse many other rights and freedoms achieved in the last 50 years.

But a Democratic Congress could put a stake through federal zombie laws before the Supreme Court majority brings them back from the dead. Read on for how.

In the wake of the recent raft of horrifying SCOTUS decisions, Democrats are looking for proactive ways to contain the damage.

18/06/2024

In the weeks before a presidential election, a media outlet’s coverage can swing an entire country from calm prosperity to complete chaos.

So if a national newspaper, for example, published tons of stories about one presidential candidate’s age & memory, yet made scarce mention of the other’s frequent lapses into incoherence and violent incitement, that could change enough minds to sway a race to the latter, we'd be right to question the political media's intentions.

In the weeks leading up to a presidential election, the quality of a media outlet’s coverage can swing an entire country from calm prosperity to complete chaos. It sounds hyperbolic, but political races, especially at the state level, are often determined by a few thousand votes, and those votes c...

31/05/2024

Trump has always shown us who he is. But neither mainstream news outlets nor GOP lawmakers would do what a dozen brave New Yorkers did yesterday: Call it like they saw it and hold the former president to account.

When a New York City jury handed down 34 consecutive guilty verdicts against Donald Trump in his hush money trial yesterday, I knew I had to do two things quickly. First, I poured myself a celebratory bourbon, even if it was only just after 4 p.m. here in Texas. And second, I hopped back into

30/05/2024

Tradwife influencers are a sentinel, and we laugh at them to our peril. These increasingly popular figures give polish to patriarchy.

They are emblematic of America’s retrograde swing. Algorithms pump their content, which is especially alluring to a breed of men drawn to the idea of wifely submission and right-wing extremist politics.

Women are being told to know their role as caregivers—a virtue that positions women as America’s convenient, and most undervalued social safety net.

14/05/2024

Feeling poll panic? Yeah, us too. But just remember election-year media builds entire news cycles around a glut of polls that often mislead and misinform us.

Today we dig into what political media should be doing instead.

Election-year media builds entire news cycles around a glut of polls that mislead and misinform us. What could they be doing to better guide us to November?

07/05/2024

To win in November, Democrats must bring the courtroom to the campaign. Convert the nation into a jury and our ballots into verdicts.

Democrats will get the advantage of arguing on behalf of democracy while putting Donald Trump in a situation he has almost never been in during his short political career: on defense.

There is a pathway for Democrats to maintain power: Treat the GOP presidential candidate like the criminal he is and bring the courtroom to the campaign.

23/04/2024

The human implications of a changing climate are stark when bodies start piling up over natural resources. Less apparent is the burden it imposes on day-to-day life, especially those of women.

The water crisis in South Sudan should be an ominous warning for the western world.

The scorching hot temperatures and evaporating water levels in the war-torn African nation is a warning for our collective climate future.

09/04/2024

It should go without saying that when a dictator decides to re-create reality, it will eventually be abused to commit horrors.

A second Trump administration, armed with a federal bureaucracy and possibly even hand-picked military leadership, will tell us to ignore everything we know and can see, and instead accept their “alternative facts.”

One of Donald Trump’s first acts as president in 2017 was to force Sean Spicer onto the podium to lie about how his inauguration was the best attended and watched ever. It was such an audacious and easily dispelled lie—there was footage to prove otherwise. But Trump’s narcissistic ego prevente...

03/04/2024

When readers are at the mercy of algorithms that deliberately suppress and censor content and newsrooms are being hollowed out, leaving few resources to cover consequential issues, it’s no wonder media literacy is in crisis.

I decided I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I didn’t speak to somebody at MSNBC about NBC’s decision to hire Ronna McDaniel, the former RNC chair who helped Donald Trump try to overturn the 2020 Presidential Election. I’m just a freelance columnist at the network, but her hire felt lik...

28/03/2024

The proliferation of anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theories has ravaged schools across the U.S., turning many places of learning into hostile environments for LGBTQ students.

In February, 16-year-old Nex Benedict was physically attacked by three students in a bathroom at Owasso High School and died the next day. According to texts shared by a family member, Benedict had been consistently bullied for months over their gender identity and was reportedly with another trans....

22/03/2024

While the statue itself might not be a feminist image, it is evocative of a female experience, a demand made of girls and women to be tolerant, strong, resilient throughout our lives—to play along.

Three days after the Fearless Girl statue was installed facing down Wall Street’s Charging Bull in Manhattan’s Financial District, a man dressed in a suit and tie was photographed “humping the statue while his gross date rape-y friends laughed and cheered him on” according to witness Alexis ...

19/03/2024

The journalism establishment has been cowed by right-wing anti-abortion activists for decades. Editors and producers let judicial candidates lie that Roe v. Wade was “settled law,” took patently dishonest lawmakers at their word when they said they would make exceptions for women’s life and health, and dismissed any urgency over reproductive freedom (even as women marched every year for abortion rights and states passed ever-more restrictive laws) as hysterical scaremongering.

It took ten years for me to have a baby, and at no point in that time did I think: You know what would make this grueling, expensive, uncomfortable process even better? The federal government’s involvement. During my thrice-daily injections of hormones, my daily blood draws, and twice-weekly ultra...

13/03/2024

When events like The Fifth Circuit ruling this week that fathers have the right to deny daughters access to birth control making it clear that the Dobbs decision was just the beginning of the rollback of women’s rights, we have loudly question who exactly gets to be "We" in "We the People".

“All men are created equal” only holds for a specific value of “all” “men” and “equal”—and white cishet male Republicans appear to be the only ones who can…

07/03/2024

When women seek medical help for chronic pain health providers are still scrutinizing their mental and emotional health.

Yes, still.

The psychologist on my Zoom screen is asking about my body. What are my chronic pain symptoms? What strategies do I use to manage discomfort? What’s my attitude toward my pain? As a patient at a pain clinic at a major university hospital, I’m required to complete a 90-minute session with the psy...

05/03/2024

In its quest for balance, the mainstream media has frequently failed to challenge Trump’s narratives, instead giving airtime and column inches to his speeches without sufficient context or fact-checking.

As we inch closer to the election in November, the press must reassess its role in covering Trump. It’s not enough to simply report what he says; there must be a concerted effort to contextualize, analyze, push back on false information.

In response to former President Donald Trump’s scaremongering speech in which he claimed that “Hamas and Antifa will terrorize our streets”; vowed that the election would be his political enemies’ “Judgment Day”; referred to the people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 as “hostag...

28/02/2024

From bounty-hunters to “fetal personhood” bills, GOP state lawmakers are finding new ways to criminalize not only terminating pregnancies, but nearly all forms of bodily autonomy.

Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, I’ve gotten really obsessed with survival competition TV. The psychology driving this isn’t exactly subtle; watching low-stakes demonstrations of human resilience while the world is falling apart lends me some sense of reassurance that at least some of us can, well...

22/02/2024

It’s not hyperbole to say the re-election of the former president—twice indicted, with 91 felony counts against him—will threaten the safety of the nation and the world.

His failed insurrection is merely a blueprint of what he can, and likely will accomplish if given another four years.

It’s early in 2025 and the days are still short. The country is wracked by protests against President Trump’s moves to consolidate power into the dictatorship he promised. The administration has invoked the Insurrection Act, deployed the military, and declared that any protesters out after sundo...

20/02/2024

Ever wonder how a media narrative gets set?

Look no further than the past few weeks in headlines and chyrons for an object lesson in how the corporate press ignores the complexity of governing in favor of chasing whatever story corrupt GOP operatives shout about the loudest.

One candidate for the presidency is old, sometimes trips over his words, and once kept a couple of boxes of paperwork in his house. Another candidate is old, sometimes trips over his words, keeps truckloads of classified documents in his house and bragged about them, s*xually assaulted and defamed a...

13/02/2024

Right-wing lawmakers are dismantling efforts to remedy the damage of segregation and the slavery that preceded it. But for Black and brown people to thrive in American life, diversity cannot be a relic of the past.

There is a child in America—a worker, a dreamer—whose hard work will never be recognized. They will struggle and toil for little or no end. At best, their labors will be co-opted and stolen; at worst, it will be as dust—forgotten and buried. This person will try to better themselves, to push a...

07/02/2024

“Life’s traumas often leave us with nothing to do but be together,”

Read Laura Leigh Abby's moving essay about discovering the power of community during one of the most terrifying moments of her life.

When I was told that my newborn had a heart murmur, I didn’t worry. I had been diagnosed with the same condition at birth. When his pediatrician didn’t like the sound she was hearing during his 18-month check-up, I still didn’t worry. “It’s just the murmur,” I assured my wife, Sam. “We...

23/01/2024

Coming into the 2024Election understand that the anti-abortion movement will never let up, despite overturning Roe. And their bet is that justice-minded people are feeling too helpless and burned-out to fight back against their redoubled efforts to attack bodily autonomy.

But the truth is that there are real ways to fend off their attacks and win.

This election year will demand all hands on deck. Especially when it comes to defending and expanding abortion rights and access in the U.S. There’s plenty of work to go around to counter threats to bodily autonomy at practically every level, from the hyper-local—think city councils and county c...

18/01/2024

Why are so many women diagnosed with autism later in life despite demonstrating neurodivergence as girls?

The answer is often complex, incomplete, and even infuriating.

It began with a quiz. A friend from Chicago was visiting me in New York. While she and I were sitting on the couch watching TV, and my husband puttered around in the background, I found myself taking an online autism quiz. I got an outrageously high score, placing me well above the threshold for

16/01/2024

With so many local newspapers and reporters’ jobs gone, U.S. towns are suffering a profound information crisis. And that void is often being filled by fake broadsheets bankrolled by GOP operatives.

With so many local newspapers and reporters’ jobs gone, U.S. towns are suffering a profound information crisis. Which is exactly what Republicans want.

19/12/2023

Fascism isn’t an ancient relic or an outdated term; it has returned as a living, breathing process transforming and weaponizing the state against its people.

Few remain from the generation that watched the ideology grasp and mutate and unfold its horrors the first time, and without that living memory, we are challenged to explain what fascism was and how it worked.

There’s nothing quite like living through a moment. Try explaining it or documenting it, describing it or representing it, and somehow the very visceral reality of experiencing a time or era can never be conveyed. Take, for example, life before smartphones. To someone who has never lived without t...

13/12/2023

In his Veterans Day speech, former president Donald Trump promised to hunt down and murder his political enemies. He was not speaking metaphorically or using hyperbole for dramatic effect, as the press should know well by now after four years of making good on his words.

And yet, much of our corporate media still doesn't treat him like the venal, corrupt, aspiring dictator that he is.

A look at the state of news coverage of the GOP frontrunner.

In his Veterans Day speech, former president Donald Trump promised to hunt down and murder his political enemies. “In honor of our great veterans on Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the conf...

06/12/2023

At a time when facts are essential, we need commentators and pundits to be actual subject matter experts.

For news, analysis, and explanations, we assume the people who are booked on the cable networks, quoted in print, or even invited on podcasts are subject matter experts, but that isn't always the case.

A pandemic. Indictments and legal proceedings. A political scandal or big election news. When a big story breaks, we grab the TV remote to get live updates and expert commentary and analysis from one of the cable TV news channels. A Trump indictment? We hang onto every word from the expert legal ana...

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