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Category: Gender

A Tainted Pick, No Matter What

A Tainted Pick, No Matter What

Posted by | Sep 27, 2018 | , |

Brett Kavanaugh will be confirmed to the Supreme Court tomorrow. Call me jaded, prescient, resigned, pessimistic, whatever. My prediction is based solely on history and my complete lack of faith in our Senate Judiciary Committee (and by extension, our Senate) as a body when it comes to issues of this nature. Maybe it’s because I’m 56 and I have seen the majority in that group show their disconnectedness to real America to the point of ad nauseum. But if it’s a glimmer of hope you want, here goes. They are going to pay a massive price for this. The...

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The Fallout of Party Hardy

Posted by | Sep 24, 2018 | |

A few years ago when a dear high school friend died, I took out my yearbook to reminisce a bit. One of the things that surprised me was how many times I saw a variation on this theme in what my classmates wrote: “To a girl who was at all the parties … ” It made me laugh. Like most, I did a lot of experimenting with alcohol in those days and it was easy to get into clubs because the legal drinking age was 18. So not only did we have house parties, we were sneaking into bars. In the context of the current national conversation around the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, those days keep coming back to me in a variety of ways and have me thinking: If I had been sexually assaulted back then (I wasn’t), would it now be assumed that I had been asking for it because I’d been drinking? I didn’t gather friends and gang up on anyone unsuspecting and violate their bodies or their dignity using my tipsy state as an excuse for bad behavior. And I certainly wasn’t a member of any club that encouraged the denigration of others as part of its code and/or admittance. While I certainly couldn’t recall dates and locations for every party I went to, I can tell you exactly where...

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Tapping into ‘Heroic Compassion’

Tapping into ‘Heroic Compassion’

Posted by | Jul 19, 2018 | , |

Let’s talk about behavior and politics and our new world order. Not only am I struggling to find my place in the latter, but I find myself judging people’s apathy or – and this is key – their perceived apathy. I don’t know how you CAN’T be angry right now. I don’t know how you are posting little ha-has about your book or your business or sharing memes with clever quotes while the world as we know it is burning to the ground. Maybe I envy you? Maybe when the Great Creator made me and lined up my cells...

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Deconstructing the First Lady’s Jacket

Posted by | Jun 22, 2018 | , |

Have you seen that public service announcement circulating about calling 911 but pretending to order a pizza if you’re in danger? It’s a way of getting a message out without tipping off the person who’s holding you hostage or intimidating you. This, to me, may be an apt comparison to what First Lady Melania Trump was doing wearing that now infamous jacket with the words “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” on the back en route to a Texas detention center near the southern border. First, let me clear up a few things. I am not so concerned about Melania Trump’s jacket that I’ve forgotten about families being separated at the border. I am not, as all the memes seem to suggest, “distracted” to the point where I can’t hold any other thoughts. I am quite capable of being horrified and outraged about one while still being thoughtful and curious about the other. What’s the alternative? To ignore it? Are you kidding me? Much like the national anthem story isn’t about football and the Roseanne Barr story isn’t about a TV show, this one ain’t about a fashion statement. It is, however, a statement. Make no mistake about it. The First Lady was trolling her husband. So loudly and so clearly. It was more vivid than any middle finger or vulgarity could ever be. How else can you explain...

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Bee and Barr: Parsing What Offends

Bee and Barr: Parsing What Offends

Posted by | Jun 1, 2018 | , , |

It seems while I was off-grid attending to a personal family matter yesterday, all Full Frontal hell broke loose. In the spirit of full disclosure, I was sitting in Samantha Bee’s audience less than a month ago reveling in the vulgarity of it all. I enjoyed comedian Allana Harkin’s sometimes salty warmup. Then, when the show began, Bee’s delivery of jokes was sharp and stinging, just the way I’d loved from back in her days on The Daily Show. That’s fact No. 1. Now here’s fact No. 2 – as comfortable as I am with the word “fuck,” I...

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