Jennifer Baumgardner (born 1970) is a writer, activist, filmmaker, and lecturer whose work explores abortion, sex, bisexuality, rape, single parenthood, and women's power.

While at Lawrence, she helped organize an anti-war "Guerrilla Theater," led a feminist group on campus, and co-founded an alternative newspaper called The Other that focused on intersectional issues of liberation.

Her books include Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future, Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism written with Amy Richards, and Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics.

She has written about purity balls (rituals celebrating virginity),[3] Catholic hospitals taking over secular ones and eliminating their reproductive services,[4] rape, and breastfeeding her friend's son.

She has keynoted at more than 250 universities, organizations, and conferences, including the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, Amherst College, Take Back The Night UW-Madison, and the New Jersey Women and Gender Studies Consortium.

Called "dependably attentive to the gray areas around divisive issues,[8]" this "simple" approach also elicits criticism of her work from feminists and other who find her "off-puttingly naive".

Kimberlé Crenshaw's description of "intersectionality" drew on the work of the Combahee River Collective and advanced the idea that gender might be just one of many entry points for feminism.

Transparency about whether a feminist had worked out her body image issues, felt upset by an abortion, or believed that any hair could be unwanted replaced strong, black-and-white statements.

Institutions like NOW and Ms. magazine attenuated, in part because Third Wave feminists didn't need any members to be feminist.On October 4, 2000 Baumgardner and Amy Richards published their first co-authored book Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future.

This goal not only contributes to an established canon of third-wave feminist literature, but also makes the movement more appealing to young women who are misled by negative or stereotypical media and popular culture representations of feminism.

The authors argue that the latter disparity demonstrates the oppressed status of women and feminist activists, as a whole group is easily reduced to one or a few individuals, particularly in media, which disseminates this incomplete illusion.

Feminism is not only a movement for social, political, and economic equality among men and women, but also requires the freedom to access information and education.

After the critical and commercial success of Manifesta Baumgardner co-authored yet another book with Amy Richards entitled Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism which was published in January, 2005.

The authors draw heavily on individual stories as examples, inspiring readers to recognize the tools right in front of them—be it the office copier or the family living room—in order to make change.

In Look Both Ways, Baumgardner takes a close look at the growing visibility of gay and bisexual characters, performers, and issues on the national cultural stage.

Despite the prevalence of bisexuality among Generation X and Y women, she finds that it continues to be marginalized by both gay and straight cultures, and dismissed either as a phase or a cop-out.

Woven in between her cultural commentary, Baumgardner discusses her own experience as a bisexual, and the struggle she's undergone to reconcile the privilege she's garnered as a woman who is perceived as straight and the empowerment and satisfaction she's derived from her relationships with women.

In 2007, they devised an innovative way of "bringing the campus to the speakers" with the creation of Soapbox Feminist Boot Camps Archived 2013-11-08 at the Wayback Machine.

These week-long intensives immerse participants (of all ages and genders) in the practice of feminism and exposes the myriad of issues, approaches, organizations, and individuals that are the lifeblood of the movement.

[6] The film features ten different women—one of which being famous feminist Gloria Steinem—openly speaking about their abortion experiences spanning over seven decades from the years prior to Roe v. Wade to present day.

Some were conversations I kept having with second wave feminists on this listserv called History-In-Action, where the women would talk about how infuriating it was that their experiences of abortion—often trauma-free and liberating—were not part of the media presentation or common understanding of the issue.

Frustration with the yelling and the lack of personal stakes in reporting on this issue led me to want to approach it only personally—get right to the women and their stories, their faces and their lives, and get away from their political opinions.

Thus, this is a pro-abortion rights project that is most concerned with creating space for women and men to speak honestly about their lives and their abortion experiences.

The current things we have in place for justice are also inadequate, since the vast majority of rape victims don't want to or choose not to press charges.