At least once a semester I go on a rant to my students about virginity. To me, there are few more destructive concepts in the world. In making my point today, I could focus on cultures in which virginity is so overtly prized that girls are routinely subject to “virginity tests,” which means that an examination is performed on them to see if their hymen is intact—under the mistaken beliefs that a) ...
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There used to be a commonplace phrase heard in the ‘80s and ‘90s about Conservative Republicans: “They only care about the child before it’s born.” What it referred to, of course, was the idea that they were focused only on eliminating the right to abortion to save the unborn child, but they wanted to slash social programs that would help families stay out of poverty once the child was born. I hea...
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While this is in no way a criticism of Caitlyn Jenner, I find myself worrying about her initial presentation of herself and the general reaction of the media and public to it. As we have all no doubt seen by now, she has “unveiled” herself in full glamour on the cover of Vanity Fair, photographed by none other than Annie Leibowitz. Most of the comments I’ve read on social media have been quite pos...
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Memory sucks. I don’t just mean the fact that we forget things that we want to remember or that our memory gets frustratingly worse as we get older. I mean that memory is unbelievably fallible. It’s fallible way beyond what most people want to believe. I first learned about how faulty our mechanism of memory can be when I studied the topic of “recovered memories” in the context of child sexual abu...
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Pronouns. I always thought pronouns were so straightforward. There are subject pronouns and object pronouns. There are singular pronouns and plural pronouns. And there are first person, second person, and third person pronouns. It’s all very neat and tidy. And when you pride yourself on your knowledge of grammar, you feel good about your firm grip on when it is appropriate to use each of the...
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I just watched the first three episodes of the show “Togetherness” on HBO. First, I’d like to point out that the Duplass brothers (Mark and Jay), who created this show–along with Steve Zissis–are everywhere. I was already aware that Mark Duplass seemed to be appearing on my TV screen on a regular basis, but then when I googled “Togetherness” after a friend...
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The following exchange between Annie Lennox (previously of the Eurythmics) and an interviewer can be found on Pridesource.com: So what do you make of someone like Beyoncé? She recently performed on the MTV Video Music Awards and proclaimed herself a “feminist” during her set. I would call that “feminist lite.” L-I-T-E. I’m sorry. It’s tokenistic to me. I mean, I...
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OK, I’ve been listening to Meghan Trainor’s very catchy tune, “All that Bass,” on the radio for the last several weeks, and today I finally watched the video. I’ve also read some of the criticism about its being another of a string of recent pop tunes that the writers/producers cynically create for the purpose of jumping on the female body self-acceptance bandwagon—and further, that though it purp...
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As I’ve watched the whole NFL domestic violence/Ray Rice incident unfold over the past several weeks, I’ve had a variety of reactions—as has pretty much everyone I know. I haven’t written anything until now because so much was being said, andI didn’t want to be just another voice discussing the failures of the NFL. But now that I’ve listened to a great many people discuss the subject, it occurs to...
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If you haven’t started watching the ABC Family show The Fosters, August seems like a good time to catch up. I’ve written before about how sensitively The Fosters handles real-life situations. The writers take a nuanced approach and allow for sadness and messiness.* This past week’s show tackled a very difficult topic in a refreshing (for TV) manner. Stef (one of the lesbian mothers), several month...
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