On the second anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death, Khadijah Costley White meditates on his final moments and wonders if he knew how much he was loved. I had managed to avoid listening to the 911 calls recording Trayvon Martin’s death until his mother’s testimony at his killer’s trial. I can still remember Sybrina Fulton sitting, […]
This originally appeared on MichaelKaufman.com. Republished here with permission. It’s been many years since I’ve heard anyone utter the words, “Act ladylike.” But it’s hard to go more than a few hours without hearing some version of “be a man.” I couldn’t even escape it this week while seeing a production of Shakespeare’s Richard II […]
This week’s roundup of our favorites from across the interwebs to help you make sense of men and women. 1. The Tyranny Of The ‘Bad Mother’: Slacker Moms Are Just As Intimidating As Perfect Ones by Elissa Strauss of Salon says moms who brag about being lazy and sloppy can be just as judgy as […]
A former Christian Fundamentalist, Samantha Eyler now longs for a world where we don’t have to choose between our individual freedom and the collective strength provided by our religion. At 17, I lost my religion. Today, at 27, I want my faith back, but I can’t find it again. And how I wish I could. […]
Just acknowledging your privilege is like giving yourself a pat on the back. You have to actively push back against it too. True statement: In some situations, I am at a structural disadvantage because I am female. True statement: Most of the time, I have a structural advantage because I am white, straight, cis-gendered, wealthy, […]
Why does outrage about sexual objectification coming from a conservative woman have to be labeled as censorship? Yesterday a story spread across the Internet about a mother who was so offended by the explicit nature of a new line of T-shirts at popular retailer PacSun that she bought every inappropriate T-shirt in the store to […]
This originally appeared on Alternet.org. Republished here with permission. Women can be funny. Why is this obvious fact still controversial? We’re at the beginning of what’s looking like a new age of female comedy. A brigade of female comics—women like Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Sasheer Zamata, and the great Tina Fey—has stormed the cultural landscape. […]
It’s hard to care about the fact that being poor makes people unfree when you’ve never been subjected to the trauma of poverty yourself. Mother Jones magazine ran a piece recently about how people who live in poor neighborhoods—certain parts of, say, Chicago, Philly, Detroit, and Atlanta—are as likely to get PTSD as veterans of […]
