My belief in a higher power has morphed into a belief in people. Last year I wrote a piece on my agnosticism, an element of identity that “others” me in relation to the dominant Christian culture I was raised in. The piece gave me an opportunity to explore all the little twists and turns in […]
Racist violence is as American as apple pie. Remember that Donald Trump froze funds that were supposed to go to groups fighting neo-Nazi violence. Remember that the Department of Justice recently announced that its civil rights division will be focusing its energies not on the precipitous rise in anti-black and anti-Muslim hate crimes that followed Trump’s election, but on “affirmative action […]
“We love women, but we only hire men” is a norm that needs immediate change in tech culture. It’s been a bad week for inclusion in tech. One of Google’s engineers wrote a manifesto with the misguided notion that women can’t do tech for “biological” reasons, such as being prone to anxiety disorders. While Google took initiative and […]
There is no way to sugarcoat the fact that Trump has helped stoke some of the ugliest aspects imaginable. But there are voices of sanity and many helpful things we can do. The day after the 2016 presidential election, therapists around the country reported a surge in clients emotionally devastated by the shock and disgust […]
If everyone in the world woke up tomorrow and said “I’m a feminist,” nothing would automatically change. Progress comes from what we do, not what we are. It’s hard to define the exact moment when being a feminist went mainstream, but it might have been when Beyonce performed in front of the word FEMINIST in […]
Nobody thinks their son is going to hurt someone. It’s about time the subject of rape comes out of the closet. We’ve been pussyfooting around the topic for far too long, and our sons and daughters deserve more from us. The topic of sex is messy. It makes us uncomfortable. For many parents, the topic of sex […]
What Duval and countless men like him fear isn’t transgender women, gay men, or cis women, what they fear is themselves. That underneath all the “grab them by the pussy” and “I’d hit that” talk,” they are really fragile and terrified. I remember my first bicycle. It was pink with purple pompons and had a […]
I think that traditional masculinity, or toxic masculinity, is dangerous. It’s dangerous to the man, and it’s dangerous to the people around the man. Donald Trump’s election was a victory for toxic masculinity and patriarchy, two issues psychologist Terry Real has spent a career exploring. Since the 1998 publication of his groundbreaking book I Don’t Want […]
