After the ball was over, after the break of morn, after the dancers’ leaving, after the stars were gone…it was about forty eight hours before I read my first piece of Internet verbiage about how the goal of marriage is an assimilationist one and how saddened the writer was to have her queerness coöpted. And [...]
Archive for the ‘Gender’ category
Come back to the five and dime, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
The Husband and I have just delved into the first two episodes of “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” the cult TV show from the mid-70’s starring Louise Lasser as the title character of a Norman Lear soap-opera send-up set in fictional Fernwood, Ohio. The cast also includes Dodi Goodman as Mary’s ditzy mother and Mary Kay [...]
On female power
I just graded about twenty exams in a row from students who, when asked an essay question about masculine desires and feminine gender performance in American women authors of the 17th-19th centuries, responded with sentence after sentence about how this or that character shows “female power.” And I’m going to barf if I ever see [...]
Read yr idols
Hard to believe this book is twenty years old. It still thrums with energy and danger. Half a lifetime ago, I discovered it at a friend’s house, devoured it, and started saving up to buy it myself. This was in the days before Amazon and Google Books. I had to take a bus to the [...]
What feminine eardrums you have
I know you’ve all seen the ads for the pink tool sets–that are supposed to make a woman feel less dykey, I guess, if she needs to swing a hammer? Maintain her feminine delicacy and freshness like the flower petal she is, despite that screwdriver in her perfectly manicured hand making her feel like she [...]
Good hair
How much money do you spend on your hair? If you’re a guy, do you cut it yourself? If you’re a woman, do you go to Supercuts? Or a fancy stylist? Is there a real difference between a $40 haircut and a $400 haircut? How about color? Do you spend money getting the gray out? [...]
Humorless
I fear that I’m getting a reputation for being not-fun in my old age. Sure, I’m only 30, but it’s clear that a whole landscape of human interactions has closed off to me. My interest in movies and television has waned. And I really don’t enjoy dating as much as I used to. It all [...]
Bye bye baby
I’ve moved through life assuming that giving birth was always a possibility. And now, at nearly 43, I have to sever that option or cling on to it. Severing would mean better physical health, the resolution of medical issues, and a life liberated from menstruation. Now that I spend more time menstruating than not, I [...]
Bitten
SPOILER ALERT: This post discusses the plot of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. I highly recommend reading them, rather than reading about them…but I suspect many will not. And let’s start by acknowledging Caitlin Flanagan’s excellent article on female adolescent desire in The Atlantic Monthly. She covers so much, but this is my personal experience of [...]
