Watching Amy Schumer’s show reminds me that eradicating misogyny from the world is as much an inside job as it is a fight to be won out there. One of the many facets that I appreciate about comedian Amy Schumer’s work is that she shines a light on the cultural conditioning that keeps women in […]
Finally, the place where I live is making a public admission that I’m welcome here. The last few weeks have felt like a train moving through the night without interior or exterior lighting. I’m not sure if the destination has been fully revealed, but as I sat in my 4-year-old son’s room a couple of […]
Even when girls and women say, out loud, that they are experiencing pain, people, including medical professionals, are more likely to minimize or dismiss what they say. I had a headache that lasted for years. It was there when I woke up and there when I went to sleep. I got so used to it […]
As a black woman, it isn’t always easy to explain why I remain in this place. But today may give some insight into why I do. On the surface, the events that have transpired since 8pm last night in Charleston, South Carolina, seem a lot like other killings of black citizens that have happened over […]
A woman, no matter her background, should never be asked to prove she is a woman. It was with nearly flawless timing that, just as the national conversation around Caitlyn Jenner, transgender identities, and the definition of womanhood was building to a screaming crescendo, Netflix released the third season of Orange is the New Black. […]
We begin the damaging process of turning boys into men long before boyhood ends. “The three most destructive words that every man receives when he’s a boy is when he’s told to ‘be a man,’” — Joe Ehrmann, coach and former NFL player If we are honest with ourselves, we have long known that masculinity […]
Despite all evidence to the contrary, all talks of privilege, all facts and statistics, many Americans still believe that if someone is struggling economically, they are morally suspect and should somehow work harder. Whether citizens of the United States will admit it or not, we are in the midst of a great delusion about class and income […]
We need to ground discussions of the significance of Rachel Dolezal’s race on the question of how—how race works and who pulls the strings. Like many people, I’ve spent the last few days avidly following the case of Rachel Dolezal. Dolezal, the current president of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP, is in the […]
