A couple of days ago a “Dear Abby” column had a letter in it from a 16-year-old girl who works in the food service industry and reveals that a coworker quit because the boss told her he had “feelings” for her. Now the young girl is uncomfortable working there and doesn’t know what to do. Abby, in all her pre-feminist glory, tells the young girl to “keep her distance” and… Read More »I Was a Teenaged Feminist?
Do you know what pisses me off? Warren Buffett calling out Elizabeth Warren for being angry. As I’ve grown older I do indeed try to temper my anger, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get mad; I just try to save my mad for the things which are really worth it. And injustice, inequity, power-grabbing one-percenters, those things are worth getting mad over. As are the banks and the banksters… Read More »Warren Buffett Says Elizabeth Warren’s “Too Angry”
(This post originally appeared in the Washington Monthly) Those of us who can actually remember the Vietnam War well remember the slogan: What if they gave a war and nobody came? It was used to protest the most modern of our useless wars, until the most recent misbegotten two, of course. In those days people actually took to the streets to try and do some good: bring the boys home,… Read More »What if They Gave a March and Nobody Came?
(This post originally appeared in The Washington Monthly) In yesterday’s staff memo by New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., he wrote that in last week’s firing of Abramson “compensation played no part whatsoever in my decision that Jill could not remain as executive editor. Nor did any discussion about compensation.” I believe that one small part of that memo about this whole brouhaha: the actual monies involved were… Read More »Women,Money and Power
(This post first appeared in slightly different form in the Washington Monthly) Since the resignation under fire of Health and Human Services Director Katherine Sebelius you no longer hear as much about repealing the Affordable Care Act (although certain candidates, most recently Scott Brown, continue to bring it up). But when her head rolled a lot of people seemed to feel better. Now the call is for the head of… Read More »The Comforting Feeling of Rolling Heads
For some reason, and no one intelligent knows why, far too many conservative men think that women talking about insured and covered birth control and available abortion means we are whores. Sluts. Loose women who cannot control our libidos. The most obvious question is just who IS it all these loose women are screwing, anyway? Because clearly, it isn’t the men who are screaming the loudest about keeping us virgins… Read More »Why Talking About Birth Control and Abortion Does Not Make You a Slut
I live in Savannah, which is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and to which I willingly and gratefully moved when my last child left the nest. I live in Savannah, where the lines for Paula Deen’s restaurant, Lady and Sons, stretch around the block most days, and the parking lot at her brother’s restaurant over the bridge on Whitemarsh Island, Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House, is perpetually… Read More »Why The Paula Deen Controversy is About Much More Than Words
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