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What We Need to Talk About When We Talk About Sex and Feminism

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

The Fight About Feminism and Motherhood That Isn’t

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

Pay Close Attention to Those Behind the Curtain

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

Where is My Flying Car?

When I was in my twenties and could not even imagine middle age, I realized I would be 44 in the year 2000. That seemed impossibly old. But as I neared that age and the century neared its end, I was in a different place than I had been twenty years before. Y2K notwithstanding (even my sensible middle sister hoarded water and food for the impending doom), on New Year’s… Read More »Where is My Flying Car?

The South Can Rise Again But Not Like You Think

A video depicting residents of Mississippi and Alabama as toothless, ignorant bigots is making its way around the country and, perhaps, the world. That video and the fact that several southern states have gone for Santorum and Gingrich in the Republican primaries has, it seems, confirmed the notion that the South, as a whole, is woefully stupid and racist. As a woman born and raised in the South who has… Read More »The South Can Rise Again But Not Like You Think

The South Can Rise Again, But Not Like You Think

A video depicting residents of Mississippi and Alabama as toothless, ignorant bigots is making its way around the country and, perhaps, the world. That video and the fact that several southern states have gone for Santorum and Gingrich in the Republican primaries has, it seems, confirmed the notion that the South, as a whole, is woefully stupid and racist. As a woman born and raised in the South who has… Read More »The South Can Rise Again, But Not Like You Think

Being Fucked by Republicans. Fun? Not So Much

(This post originally appeared on doesthismakesense.com) I’m writing this when I should be vacuuming. In pearls and heels and nothing else; well, maybe an apron, just an apron covering my front so that my ass hangs out, tantalizingly. In the hope, of course, that my husband, the only man with whom I have ever had sex, will come home and take me, there, in the living room, throwing caution (and… Read More »Being Fucked by Republicans. Fun? Not So Much

What You May Not Know About Health Care

When in the early nineties I lived in Oxford , England, as the new mother of a six-month old, nurses regularly came to our flat for well baby check-ups. All of my medications and doctors’ visits and all those for my child were free for the first year of her life. My prescriptions averaged around ten dollars each, no matter how expensive they were. And I was only a temporary… Read More »What You May Not Know About Health Care

Boys Being Boys (on this debt ceiling “crisis”)is Very Ugly

I wonder: has everyone else following this manufactured crisis about raising the debt ceiling noticed that it’s just a bunch of men playing a high school game of chicken? Each side is racing their car towards the other and hoping the other will turn the wheel away first. I suppose I could make another analogy about, well, you know what, but the truth is that the whole fight among lawmakers… Read More »Boys Being Boys (on this debt ceiling “crisis”)is Very Ugly