Casual Sex and the Orgasm Gap

First, this may be old news to some of you, but Heather Corinna (founder and driving force behind the awesome sex ed site Scarleteen) is conducting a couple of surveys on people attitudes toward casual sex. She’s especially keen on people completing the second survey (which has fewer respondents so far) and particularly encourages LGBT [...]

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Rush Limbaugh Has Me Sussed

My most recent lapse in blogging comes to you courtesy of the IRS and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, in one of his pensive, sexier moments. (He looks much hotter with less mustache. If hot is a word one can ever connect to Bismarck.) I’ve finished my taxes. (Yay!) They collided in ways both stressful and [...]

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Boehner: A Heart So Shriveled He Makes My Eardrums Bleed

Someone please tell me why John Boehner has to be from Ohio? Weren’t we shamed enough back when convicted felon James Traficant was one of our congresscritters? (Now out of prison, Traficant is contemplating another run at the House. Yipes.) Republican obstructionism: Boehner owns it! (Via Skippy.)

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What’s in a Decade? (Or, Feminism’s Non-linear History)

Historians are awfully fond of saying “It’s more complicated.” For better or worse, I’m a historian by training and inclination. Consider yourself warned: pedantry ahead! Even though it’s a decade old, Amy Richards’ and Jennifer Baumgarden’s intro to Manifesta- a quick tour through women’s lives in 1970, the year both were born – is still [...]

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Mapping the Landscape of Our Brains

Through my stress-reduction course (aka my stealth Buddhism course), I learned a little more about how our brains work. It’s not just that the left side is logical and the right hemisphere is creative. The left is sequential and the right is all about NOW. Or, to steal a metaphor from Jill Bolte Taylor, the [...]

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Radical Compassion and the HCR Victory

I’m sitting in front of my TV, like so many of you, watching the post-HCR vote speechifying. I’m grinning like a fool, tearfully. James Clyburn just said that Nancy Pelosi got it done through tenacity and compassion. I’ll have more to say about this later, but I think that this combination – which I’ll call [...]

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Sex and the Student: When Naughty Blogs Turn Nasty and Mean

There’s a newish blog at my university that’s gotten attention in the local press – all negative – and even got a mention from Courtney Martin at Feministing, though for all the wrong reasons. Courtney didn’t link to it, no doubt due to its nasty content, but I’m local, so I will, because I’m not [...]

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If My Garden Were a Reality Show …

… these would be the survivors still on the island. All of these chard pictures are brought to us courtesty of occasional commenter Hydraargyrum. It was he who covered the chard back in late November, when its ice-encrusted destiny was apparently sealed. Instead, he came by my house and dropped a blanket over the chard, [...]

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When Cynicism Dissolves into Air

This evening, within a twenty-minute span, I hear that my Congresscritter (Charlie Wilson) has pledged to vote yes on the health-care bill. Then I read a student paper that made me cry with gratitude, because it’s beautifully written, and because she says my class had “influenced me on a personal level more than any class [...]

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A “Pro-Life” Rejoinder to Stupak’s Stupidity

As more wobbly Dem congresscritters commit to supporting the health care package, I’m guardedly hopeful that Bart Stupak is about to consign himself to the dustbin of history. Nonetheless. I’ve got two “pro-life” reasons why wafflers like my own congresscritter, Charlie Wilson, need to vote yes and put themselves on the right side of history. [...]

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Medicare for All – Part III of an Infinite Series

Or maybe, just maybe, the idea will catch fire this time, bringing the series to a merciful end? (Oh-oh … gotta watch my death panel rhetoric!) Amid all the hullabaloo over Dennis Kucinich pledging to vote “yes” on the health care bill, which blanketed NPR for the three hours I was on the road today, [...]

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Yippee, It’s My Name Day … or Is It?

Just for the record, I believe today would be my name day, if I were only Catholic. Which, also for the record, I am not and never will be. Closest I ever came was taking Communion while attending Mass with a long-ago boyfriend. This was apparently quite a dire sin, as my Presbyterian cred didn’t [...]

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Disturbing Stuff I Find While Just Doing My Job

This is a post that begins with Godwin’s Law already fulfilled. Hitler is already in the picture and can’t be wished out of it. But first, a word on how Hitler got here. As regular readers know, I’ve been teaching women’s and gender studies for nearly a decade, and I love doing it. As you [...]

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Why Is HRT Still Prescribed? Well, Let’s Try Listening to Women

I’m as curmudgeonly as anyone about Big Pharma. I’ll readily agree that their pursuit of profit has driven up drug prices (direct-marketing ads, woo hooo!) and cost lives (Vioxx, anyone?). But I’m also realistic about why we take drugs and how they can, in fact, improve our lives. For instance, there’s a good argument to [...]

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Glittery Vajayjays and the Denaturing of Female Sexuality

Y’know, I wasn’t going to write about vajazzling, because I figured it was too silly for words. I like sparkly things as much as any gal. Yet I’m just bemused that anyone would desire a crystal encrusted “vajayjay.” (How does one achieve this? Let Sociological Images enlighten you!) I don’t think this will take off as [...]

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Hello Kitty Caturday

You know how products for kids just seem to get more blatantly gendered every year? Well, the other day when my sons and I were trying to buy Band-Aids in CVS, they came in just two flavors for kids: Transformers and Hello Kitty. With no prompting from me, my boys picked Hello Kitty. They don’t [...]

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My Nanosecond of Zen

And no, I haven’t been on Jon Stewart’s closing segment. I’ve just been taking a stress-reduction class, which flies under the radar even in this rather hippy-dippy town as a “wellness” course, but in fact has been an introduction to Buddhist practice. I’ve got nothing against hippy-dippy. Half my youth would’ve been lost without it [...]

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The Link between Fraternities and Rape: Just a Stereotype?

In a previous post I made a glib reference to fraternities as likely sites for rape to occur. While I agree with brinkmanship’s criticism that I tarred all fraternities with a single brush, I will also say that the stereotype of them as places conducive to acquaintance rape isn’t unfounded. It has a pretty firm [...]

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Of Hairballs and Shaving: Feeling the Burn

I used to date a guy in grad school for whom shaving was pure misery. He got razor burn nearly every time. He’d let it go for a few days, and then I’d get whisker burn. (If I was lucky. Other times, we were so deep into poststructuralist theory that we were always already studying.) [...]

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Death of a Great Satirist: Jon Swift

I’ve been reading students papers instead of blogs this week, and so I was stunned just now to learn belatedly of the death of one of my very favorite bloggers. Jon Swift, the best and funniest faux conservative in blogtopia, died of an aortic aneurysm on his way to his father’s funeral. His real name [...]

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