A disturbing new study published in The New York Times revealed that 2/3 of college age girls reported being extreme choked during sex, sometimes to the point of passing out. 40% of the girls said the first time it happened was as early as age 12 to 17. The porn industry’s uncontrolled mass promotion of girls being abused has been our kids' sex-ed for years - and parents are still clueless about it.Fortunately US lawmakers are waking up, and age verification laws for porn are sweeping the country - 19 states have enacted them so far. Today we speak to Helen Taylor Vice President of Impact at Exodus Cry who is in the midst of the age verification fight. She has spoken to Congress, the UN and will bring us up to speed on the fight to stop selling porn to minors.

Heidi Basch-Harod, an Israeli American woman, is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and executive director of Women's Voices Now, and Nada Higuera is one of eight daughters born to Palestinian parents, now a Palestinian-American and attorney. After October 7th, they met in an interfaith Zoom meeting, and struck up a close bond and friendship.

Pain, hatred and fear gave way to love, empathy and healing. The harder the conversations, the more they communicate, listen and understand. Together they have created Daughter’s of Abraham, a poetic documentary that follows their journey – as they commit to connecting and humanizing each other in the midst of violence and war. They want you too, to join the sisterhood.

Shaynna Blaze is an award-winning interior designer, author, entrepreneur, a producer, musician, and Australian television personality known for the long running series The Block and Selling Houses… And if this wasn’t enough she is also the winner of Celebrity Apprentice Australia 2021. 

Shaynna is also a passionate advocate for the safety of women, and a social justice campaigner who has lent her voice to a number of organizations tackling domestic violence in Australia. Shaynna’s new film The Fort, made with her two kids, is about a victim of domestic violence.

This inspired her to co-found the nonprofit ‘Voice of Change Australia’ in hopes to change the cultural attitudes that underpin family violence.

On December 7th The New Feminist joins forces with Deeyah Khan, Women’s Voices Now, Knock Out Abuse West and NYT best selling author and advocate Leslie Morgan Steiner for a special screening of Behind the Rage followed by a panel with the men and women who are fighting to end relationship abuse. Links and info about the event can be found on our website thenewfeminist.net.

From becoming an iconic MTV VJ, starring in Dumb and Dumber, writing a New York Times Best selling book, to being diagnosed with a life threatening disease today’s guest, my friend Karen Duffy has done it all and has wisdom and positivity in spades!

With her son Jack preparing to go off to college she wrote her new book WISE UP: Irreverent Enlightenment from a Mother who has been through it all. It’s a series of letters filled with funny, heartwarming, wise, and irreverent life lessons drawn from the wisdom of the old stoic philosophers.

It’s one of Oprah Daily’s most anticipated books. It’s a book every parent might want to give their kid as they graduate college, but only after first reading it themselves. I just read it …and it might just change your life for the better.

I saw this fantastic documentary at the Sundance Film festival called Victims/Suspects. The film follows Rachel de Leon, an investigative journalist at The Center for Investigative Reporting, and her incredible work to uncover a disturbing pattern in the US: A surprising number of legal cases involving young women who report their rape to the police, get charged with false reporting, and instead of receiving help get thrown in jail. Victims/Suspect just premiered on Netflix and while incredibly triggering, it’s riveting and a must watch! I’m thrilled to have Rachel de Leon on the show to talk about it.

Our guest today, super model and author Paulina Porizkova is one of the most visible women in the world, yet the last two years she has garnered a huge Instagram following sharing how invisible she feels as a middle aged woman. Something so many women relate to in youth obsessed America. Decades long ageism against women in advertisement and films has given us all a warped view of what we should perceive as beautiful, how middle aged women should act and what a mature woman really looks like. By Paulina bravely sharing her own struggles embracing aging and how society views middle aged women, she has become an inspirational trailblazer helping to reset the narrative. In her new book No Filter, Paulina writes about her marriage to rockstar Ric Ocasek, the heartache after his sudden passing, her thoughts and struggles. Luckily for us shares all the wisdom she learned on the journey.

Our guest today Jewell Baraka, is brave. She has survived horrors that are hard to imagine. Her father, a deeply religious man, was popular in his community in Portland, yet behind closed doors he was a sociopathic monster. When Jewell was only five years old, he started sexually abusing her. By the time she was eleven, he trafficked his own daughter in to prostitution and porn, selling her most school nights to the highest bidder at a child brothel. After years of healing, today Jewell is a passionate advocate for victims of sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation for Journey Up and Dignity Health. Her story is difficult to hear, but it needs to be shared. Despite the darkness her life journey has brought her, she could finally find the beauty that does exist in this world.

Benji Nolot might just be the most effective arch nemesis online pornography has. He is the President of Exodus Cry, an organization that works to abolish sex trafficking and sexual exploitation while assisting and empowering its victims. They have led a tireless and successful campaign to reveal the horrendous abuses and misconceptions about the porn industry and together with other activists have helped change the cultural narrative. Benji is a prolific and talented filmmaker, his movies Raised on Porn, Beyond Fantasy and many others, powerfully unveil the disturbing reality of what goes on. He examines the reality of coercion and violence, the health impacts on those on screen and the destruction on kids it leaves in its wake. 

At 22 years old, Andrea Heinz found herself $60,000 in debt from a string of abusive relationships and entered into the commercial sex industry in Canada. She worked in prostitution for seven years and had over 4000 customer sessions. She even opened a brothel herself, hoping that the women she hired would suffer less abuse, but to no avail. Barely surviving the industry herself, she finally quit in 2013 and is now a writer, speaker and filmmaker working to raise awareness about sexual commercial exploitation and the harms of the “sex work is work” ideology. You can follow her on Twitter @heinzsight2020 to learn more about her work.