Here’s a fun little exercise: try to think of female movie and TV characters whose gender is an afterthought. Characters who matter-of-factly defy gender boundaries, whose sexuality is not a focus, who will be praised as “strong” rather than “strong for a female character.”
It’s a lot harder than I thought it would be. We spent […]

Aternet posted an excellent article about the role of white privilege in the current presidential race. It can be hard for white folks to recognize privilege, precisely because we have it and consider it normal. The article does a good job of highlighting things we may have overlooked, for example:
White privilege is when you can claim that […]

A friend emailed me a while back because she had received a Facebook invitation that was riddled with sexist notions. She had tried to explain the problems to the male who had written it, but found it difficult to express herself to him when she was so frustrated and the whole thing was written half-jokingly. […]

There was a time when I was ignorant of oppression; a blissful childhood spent aloof to the suffering in the world. My eyes began to open in my adolescence, and my identity shifted. Naively, I thought we could use the system’s own channels to reform and ameliorate oppressive conditions. I slowly became disillusioned with this […]

This is a very long post. If you get all the way through it, there is a treat at the bottom just for you.

Somewhere lying on a desk in the back of our cultured minds is a definition of property. We read it once, and can’t recite it verbatim, but we have a good idea […]

The BBC reports here that Sweden will not follow its Scandinavian neighbors by banning so-called sexist advertisements. Denmark and Norway limit the use of sexuality in marketing, but Sweden feels this is an imposition on free speech. The BBC explains:
“Basically, if something is offensive or it makes the viewer feel uncomfortable when they look at […]

It was a lot more innocent than in this picture. He was telling a story about an old restaurant job and how people would always grab his butt. And then he demonstrated on my female coworker. It wasn’t aggressive or predatory, he just cupped her cheek to enhance his story.
He walked away and I said, […]