Most commented posts

  1. Bare Breasts: Objections and Replies — 27 comments
  2. Short Men — 21 comments
  3. Arrogance, I think — 7 comments
  4. A Man Shaken by a Bomb — 5 comments
  5. Why Do Men Spit? (and women don’t) — 5 comments

Author's posts

On “lurking”

So I’m noticing that although there are a lot of registered users here, no one’s commenting.  And that’s cool.  I guess everyone’s just lurking.  Wait a minute.  LURKING??  Who the fuck came up with that name for sitting quietly at the edge of the room, just listening to what’s being said, deciding not to speak …

Continue reading

What’s so funny about a man getting pregnant?

I recently read The Fourth Procedure by Stanley Pottinger, in which, during a surgical procedure, a man is given a uterus containing a fertilized egg.  He is enraged when he finds out, afraid that if it becomes public knowledge he’ll be a laughingstock.  Turns out he’s right.  But I don’t get it.  What’s so funny …

Continue reading

King of the Castle

Octavia Butler got it right in Xenogenesis when the aliens identified one of our fatal flaws as that of being hierarchy-driven (they fixed us with a bit of genetic engineering) – but she failed to associate the flaw predominantly with males.

And Steven Goldberg got it right in Why Men Rule when he explained that …

Continue reading

Why Do Men Spit? (and women don’t)

Is it physiological?  Do males produce a larger amount of saliva?  Even so, why the need to spit it out?  Why not just swallow it?

Would that remind them of swallowing semen?  Which is female, effeminate, gay?  (I’ll ignore for the moment the assumption that all, or even most, women swallow semen.)

But no, that …

Continue reading

Redundant Women

I just read an article about the Brontes that mentioned “redundant women”. Apparently in 19thC Britain, there was such a male/female ‘imbalance’ in the population that about 500,000 women would remain unmarried. They were called “redundant” women and one of the big questions of the day was what to do with them. Geezus.

Freakonomics Indeed

I remember when I first read Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics, in which they present an astounding connection between access to abortion and crime: twenty years after Roe v. Wade, the U.S. crime rate dropped.

Astounding indeed. That men are so surprised by that! I mean, just how clueless are you guys? About the power, the …

Continue reading

Whose Violence?

I initially wrote this piece in the mid-1990s. It was published in Philosophy Now in 1999 when I was a columnist there. Ten years later, in 2010, I posted it at my other blog; it seemed required. Another three years later, I’m posting it again, here, because the people in power in mainstream media apparently …

Continue reading

Pretty Frickin’ Amazing.

Check out this video, “Pretty” by Katie Makkai:

Pretty – Katie Makkai

“And son? Take care of your mom while I’m gone.”

Excuse me?  I don’t need a child to take care of me.  I know, he might reply, I’m just trying to –  trying to what?  Teach him to be a man?  Teach him that grown women need looking after?  And that he, as the one with the penis, is just the person to do it?

Continue reading

Women’s Fiction

I finished a novel by J. D. Robb the other day and also happened to read the back inside cover blurb: “Nora Roberts is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than one hundred novels.  She is also the author of the bestselling futuristic suspense series written under the pen name J. D. …

Continue reading

Load more