Category: feminism

War Rape

It’s not just an enthusiastic spillover of violence and aggression.  The act of sexual intercourse is too specific, too far removed from the other acts of wartime violence and aggression.  Shooting a person twenty-five times instead of once or twice would be such a spillover; forcing your penis or something else into a woman’s vagina …

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Being Josh (Monday Night Basketball)

It’s Monday night basketball, an all-comers pick-up game, supposed to be fun and a good sweat.  But week after week I steel myself against the anger, the frustration of not knowing how to correct the problem, and the despair of not being able to even begin to do just that.  Eventually it happens: this time …

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How to End War

At one time, bank tellers and secretaries had a certain prestige – the time when such positions were held by men.  Schoolteachers used to be schoolmasters – before women entered the classroom.  People who boast that many doctors in Russia are women fail to mention that doctoring in …

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On “hitting on”

I bet a man came up with that term as well.

But what most intrigues me here is how?  I mean, what exactly made the first man to introduce the term think that approaching a woman for, what, a date? sex? was like hitting (on) her???

It does not bode well when the very initiation …

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Barbie – great post at gendertrender

Great post here at gendertrender. https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/life-size-barbie-scary/

Is it wrong for me to love most the line “If Barbie was a real woman, she’d have to walk on all fours”?

 

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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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Pretty Frickin’ Amazing.

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

Pretty – Katie Makkai

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