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Marissa Mayer and the Great Class Divide

A few women I know were discussing, lamenting, the state of women and the women’s movement a couple of days ago, wondering why it seems that for every step we take forward we take two steps back. They were wondering, much like the Republicans seem to be, whether feminism’s messaging is off rather than whether or not what we are doing as women is somehow misdirected. Fifty years after the… Read More »Marissa Mayer and the Great Class Divide

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

Motherhood: The Fear Factor

After six hours of hard labor, I was told my son’s heartbeat was slowing. “Get him out,” I screamed. And they did, slitting me from top to bottom in an emergency C-section. I wasn’t at the hospital or with the doctor where I had received my pregnancy care. A torrential downpour at midnight just as I started my contractions (two weeks early by the doc but right on time by… Read More »Motherhood: The Fear Factor

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

WHY Must We Constantly Re-Invent Ourselves?

I am feeling very inadequate. While I have recently, at the age of 55, moved to a new city and a house, completed a new novel, and said good-bye to my last child as she heads off the college; while I have, in the past six years ended two marriages and started a new relationship, I have not, for example: climbed a mountain, alone, started a cupcake business, left my… Read More »WHY Must We Constantly Re-Invent Ourselves?

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

Love’s Labors Lost?

My 18-year-old daughter who is a freshman in college texted me the other day that she had a date for Saturday night. I texted her back that I thought college kids didn’t date. She replied that yes that was true and she had been complaining about it just the other day, when lo and behold she got an invitation to dinner out with a boy she knows. As far as… Read More »Love’s Labors Lost?