I was in Paris recently, walking and walking as I do, when I realized that the black boots I had worn for several years were on their last legs. What better place to purchase a new pair than in Paris? I allowed myself to consider the splurge as I wandered shops and tried on pairs of boots. Just the day before I had, with my friend Karen, an American expat… Read More »Black Boots for the End of the World
I have known a father, two husbands, and a number of lovers. I have a 25-year-old son. And still, much of the time, I don’t understand the language of men. In an epic, more than 50-year struggle, I tried to talk to my father; I tried to listen to him. I tried to parse his words and even what he didn’t say. In my marriages, my relationships, I made many… Read More »Interpreting “The Language of Men”
Mitt Romney is right about one thing. We are a deeply divided country. But he is wrong about everything else: what it means, why it has happened, and what we need to do about it. And the reason he is wrong is because he, and far too many others, persist in the notion–debunked by every possible kind of evidence–that America is the greatest land on earth and everyone here should… Read More »Dysfunctional America
I freely admit that before I lost my health insurance coverage I barely thought about it: I paid the bills, had my babies, had surgery, went to the doctor, and most of what I needed was covered by a very good policy. Until I lost it and found it nearly impossible to get coverage again. Now the coverage I get is barely half as good as what I had and… Read More »Vote as if Your Very Life Depended On it: it Does
In yoga class a few days ago, the teacher, a woman, began the class by saying that originally, yoga was a practice that only men were allowed to participate in. The young women in the class seemed baffled, especially a teenager whose father, the only man in the class, went on to ask if anyone in the group knew where the word “hysteria” came from. The teacher did, I did,… Read More »Why Feminism Still Matters
My mother married my father because, she told me in a rare moment of candor, she wanted to have sex with him. She was 25 and tired of pre-sex fumbling and stolen kisses. My father was, of course, far more experienced, having been in the Pacific Theater during World War II; far less discreet about his former life (and life in general) he told his daughters inappropriate tales of the… Read More »What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Sex and Feminism
I have fantasies. Oh, do I have fantasies. They wake me up in the middle of the night; they keep me from work; they interfere with my relationships. My longing is unending. It consumes me. Sometimes I stand, immobilized by my desires: So strong and overwhelming are they that I am unable even to make a step forward. My fantasies are those of domination and submission but not in the… Read More »Fifty Shades of Grey: My Version
I was extremely heartened to read in the New York Times that having a good and open relationship with your kids, one in which you speak frequently and they solicit your advice, is a positive thing. Not that I ever doubted that. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding, and the pudding that is my children — despite occasional high temperatures and other mishaps — have turned out… Read More »Boomeranging Into An Empty Nest
Motherhood vs. Feminism? Give me a break. The New York Times recent forum with that title is just another example of the mainstream media ginning up a false dichotomy and presenting two ideas as opposing when they aren’t even mutually exclusive. And for the writers in this false “war” to state that motherhood issues pose an end to feminism shows a frightening but clear ignorance of what feminism was and… Read More »The Fight About Feminism and Motherhood That Isn’t
In the “this isn’t really news” department we have had, this week, Katie Rophe’s ridiculous article about how female sexual fantasies of bondage spell the end of feminism (a Newsweek cover story no less), a fake war between mothers who work outside the home and mothers who don’t: a war that the media has loved to burnish even though most women in the US have great respect for each other’s… Read More »Pay Close Attention to Those Behind the Curtain