As if we needed another reason to think Kai Wright is pretty much amazing. Wright talks about what Caster Semenya has lost, no matter what the outcome of her sex test is, and why the myth of sex being a binary is so very damaging: But the reality is that Semenya may be neither “boy” Read More
Alyssa praises and laments that much-discussed Esquire piece on Walter Hern, the last American doctor specializing in late-term abortions: True, magazines like Marie Claire, theoretically the smart-girl’s alternative, and magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour, do publish pieces about abortion and reproductive rights more generally. But pieces like this, that truly encapsulate the debates, and do it in extraordinary language Read More
The androgynous looking South African runner Caster Semenya has been ordered to prove her gender by the International Association of Athletics Federation: The verification requires a physical medical evaluation, and includes reports from a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist, an internal medicine specialist and an expert on gender. “So we’re talking about reports that are very long, Read More
I’m not sure why I’m posting this — I sure as hell don’t agree with anything in this Essence-ass claptrap — but it’s making the rounds and one of you smart people probably has an interesting take on it. She’s promoting her book, Stilettos in the Kitchen, which sounds like a cookbook spliced with The Read More
I’ve been having a spirited back and forth with a reader named Lex via e-mail on my post about gender socialization and pain from a few weeks back. Lex writes: 1. “If our physicalities are so elemental and inextricable to our identities … then most of us are not even experiencing the same corporeal world.” Read More
There are things you notice when you watch a string of Michael Jackson videos back-to-back, things you probably didn’t notice when you were eight. One of them is how obsessed with masculinity Michael Jackson’s Thriller– and Bad– era work seemed to be. In Thriller, he tells his girl he’s not like other guys, and he’s Read More
Above, a textbook example of the structural and cultural barriers that prevent so many inner-city girls from participating in team sports. In the suburbs, girls’ participation in sports is so commonplace that in many communities, the conversation has shifted from concerns over equal access to worries that some girls are playing too much. But the revolution Read More
From Jenee Desmond Harris’ Root piece “What Single [Black] Women Can Learn From Michelle:” “if black women are going to defy the statistics, they need to start being more realistic. Holding out for the perfect man, someone who is intellectual but not nerdy—cool but not arrogant—impeccably dressed but not effeminate—not a player but with just Read More
Last Thursday, I finally had my oft-rescheduled wisdom tooth surgery, which is why I haven’t been blogging. It’s apparently a more complicated procedure once you’re over the age of 20; your bottom wisdom teeth sit next to a nerve and extracting them after they’ve fully grown means you run the slight risk of minor facial Read More
Via Neddy at EotW, we learn of the story of a squabble between Karin Morin and her daughter, Daisy, a 22-year-old senior at Stanford. At issue is the university’s policy of allowing gender-neutral living arrangements — that is, men and women sharing the same room — in its co-op dormitories. In the co-op, housing arrangements are Read More
