It is really difficult to know how to write about feminism these days. One thing I do know for sure is that we are no more a post-feminist society than we are a post-racial one. The fact that we are still talking about women’s “place” or “role” in society, still worrying about how we come off: slutty, bitchy, angry, all means that we have a long way to go. Baby.… Read More »Whither Feminism?
At what price marriage?
I am an unmarried woman.
The other day I heard an extraordinary interview with Libyan writer Hisham Matar. His first book, In the Country of Men was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and he is an absorbingly poetic speaker. In the brief interview, Matar mentioned the kinds of things Libyan writers have for years been subjected to, including imprisonment and torture: in fact, shortly after Gaddaffi’s dictatorship began, the leader held a faux writers’… Read More »Treading Water
Within the past few days, young and famous feminist Jessica Valenti defended her decision not to take part in a panel based on More magazine’s recent list of hip and important young feminists and Nora Ephron all but dismissed the old-line feminist movement of the Seventies by esstentially calling women of that era “irritable” in a Huffington Post article taken from her new book. Is feminism schizophrenic or what? Although… Read More »Who Gets to Call Herself a Feminist Matters More Than We Might Think
On the bus ride home to the Shenandoah Valley with some of the nearly two hundred people who made the hours-long journey to the Rally for Sanity, October 30, we were fired up. We were talking politics, the Democratic Party, The Tea Party, Republicans, and, well, passion. Mostly where the passion of two years ago went. Many of those on the bus had campaigned heartily and heavily for the president.… Read More »What the Rally for Sanity and Obama Have in Common
Five years ago, right before her seventy-eighth birthday, my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The symptoms had been apparent for several years but alcohol masked some of them and denial, perhaps, masked others. Once my mother finally entered a rehabilitation facility and was no longer drinking, it became obvious that something was seriously wrong. Within weeks my sisters and I had cleaned out and sold her house and moved her… Read More »Do I Want to Know if I Will Come Down with Alzheimers?
On a recent short getaway I was sitting over breakfast one morning with my friend B, clearly jonesing from both the absence of my netbook and the dearth of decent newspapers available at the hotel at which we were staying. While I pushed my eggs around my plate, B pulled out his Kindle, bought the day’s New York Times for me, downloaded it and handed me his little machine to… Read More »Stop Me Before I Click Again
Weirdest story of the week: The New York Times today ran a piece on some schools and some school officials discouraging students from having a “best” friend. Being friends with everyone is supposed to, well, put an end to bullying. I was bulled in middle school and I have written a seminal article on school bullying for Brain, Child magazine a few years ago (well before the topic became so… Read More »Nobody is Gonna Tell Me Who to Be Friends With
Bill Press had a discussion on the “war” in Afghanistan on his radio show this morning. I put the word “war” in quotation marks because it remains difficult for me to decide whether this is an actual war or another incursion/occupation based on our idea of promoting democracy around the world—even in places that aren’t receptive to it. His point was: Where is the media coverage? Where is the information… Read More »Why Are We in Afghanistan? And Other Pressing Questions