Say, did you know millions of people worldwide marched for women’s rights and against Trumpism last Saturday? (Samantha Bee had a nice summation.) I was among them. My husband was among them. My parents were among them. My mother — who isn’t quite as addicted to online media as her Gen-X daughterContinue Reading
When I was a kid, Phyllis Schlafly used bathroom panic to help defeat the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have made sexual equality a constitutionally protected value. The claim was that the ERA would strip women of the “right to privacy based on sex” in “public restrooms and other publicContinue Reading
I want to talk about Star Wars, but that’s dangerous for me, because I don’t want to deliver any spoilers, but apparently I don’t know what a spoiler is. I think a spoiler is “a shocking or unexpected plot twist that’s important to the story.” Gandalf dying, then coming back fromContinue Reading
And why should you obey your parents, girls? It’s good practice for obeying your husbands! — the minister’s wife, to a Sunday school class full of teenage girls, including me. When I wanted to write a novel playing around with the loup-garou legends of Cajun Louisiana, I started with whatContinue Reading
About a week ago, yet another violently disturbed young man killed a bunch of people for no reason. Yes, he was a misogynist of the most toxic kind, with a grandiose and visceral hatred directed at both the women who denied him his “rightful” share of their affection, and atContinue Reading
Here are some ridiculous things that conservative anti-feminists recently had to say about feminism: Conservative Women Celebrate Women’s History by Criticizing Feminism. I can’t believe how much staying power these narratives have. The anti-feminist right has been making the same claims since I was a kid. I’ve never understood whyContinue Reading
Score! The in-flight movie was Frozen. It’s not merely a critically acclaimed and reasonably successful Disney movie, it’s a bonafide Disney phenomenon — their most financially successful animated movie so far and also incredibly popular and iconic with its target demographic of teen and pre-teen girls. What is it aboutContinue Reading
A New York Times essay attempts to make The Case for Filth: A recent, large cross-national study on the subject by an Ohio State sociologist found that “women’s housework did not decline significantly and men’s housework did not increase significantly after the mid-1980s in the United States, the United Kingdom,Continue Reading
Okay, okay, I couldn’t resist dissecting this very special February 14th message in the Wall Street Journal (?!?) from somebody I’ve never heard of before: Susan Patton: A Little Valentine’s Day Straight Talk: Young women in college need to smarten up and start husband-hunting. First of all — what is this dealContinue Reading
This Slacktivist piece on the victim-blaming inherent in certain kinds of advice [When good advice goes bad] prompted an epic comment mudstorm in which I briefly participated, kinda regretted it, stewed for a while, and started writing this essay.Continue Reading
When I was eighteen and a college freshman away from home for the first time, I learned that I was supposed to be afraid to walk alone in urban areas after dark. I learned this on the phone with my mother. I was telling her about my experiences settling intoContinue Reading
Some things are weirdly predictable. A woman will write something about how much she hates being told to smile by strange men — such as [Smile, baby!] and [This morning a man told me to smile] — and the comments section will be full of guys telling her that beingContinue Reading
In The Rocky Horror Picture Show (which I saw an unconscionable number of times in my adolescence) when Frank N. Furter unveils Rocky, his artificially created superhunk, Janet says, “I don’t like a man with too many muscles.” Frank snarls back, “I didn’t MAKE him for YOU!” That little exchangeContinue Reading