Arunachalam Muruganantham is a personal hero of mine. Like most men, Muruganantham had no idea how menstruation even worked before he married his wife. As people with little means in India, he began to realize the incredible challenge that women like his wife faced when their periods came. There are profound health hazards that come along […]
Reckoning with Female Rage
Thankful for this one from Sarah Gates. One of my favorite podcasts is “Call Your Girlfriend,” self-described as “a podcast for long-distance besties everywhere,” co-hosted by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman. I listen to it nearly every Friday for a number of reasons, including the no-holds-barred attitudes of the hosts, their passionate feminism, and their […]
What Women’s Ministries Lack
This post comes to us from Kelsi Klembara. The lights in the large auditorium dim as quiet worship music plays in the background and a hushed buzz spreads throughout the room full of women. I look hesitantly at the two women sitting next to me. The speaker has just told us since Christian sisterhood is […]
Feministic Fallout? More on Underachieving Boys and Gracious G.A.W.F.s
There’s a telling scene at the end of Whit Stillman’s film Barcelona (above). One of the characters remarks about how wonderful it is to marry someone from another country. Alienating traits, instead of being taken personally, can be chalked up to national differences. As in, “must be a Spanish thing”, or “in Japanese culture, that’s […]
Over-Confident Men and Underestimating Women: Some Thoughts on Shame and Leadership
Back in May I read an article in the Atlantic Monthly that rocked me. “The Confidence Gap” addressed the gaping hole of women in top leadership positions. I read it expecting the usual issues: poor math scores, smaller salaries, always feeling behind everyone else. And certainly, this article provided plenty of those sad and disappointing […]
Mommyjuice and the Burden of Perfection(-ism)
For as much as we talk about addiction and alcoholism on this site, you might think we’re teetotalers, or anti-alcohol or something. Anyone who has attended one of our conferences knows that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, the old humblebrag about Episcopalians–“where two or three are gathered together, you will always find […]
Over the Hill and Under the Law: Girls, Math and the "Prime" of Life
In The NY Times Magazine a couple of weeks ago, Carina Chocano launched another one of her missiles of insight, this time at the double standards about age for men and women in a column entitled “Girls Love Math. We Never Stop Doing It.” Her jumping off points being the pilot of Mindy Kaling’s new […]
Another Week Ends: Spoiled Kids, Harvard Perfectionism, KKKlan Grace, Lonergan's Lament, Negative Thinking, Mormonism, Golf Ethics, Sorkinisms, and Fall Conference Update
1. Over at The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert surveyed the latest swath of parenting books, asking the question “Why Are American Kids So Spoiled?” Much of the article reiterates what we’ve been hearing with alarming frequency the past couple years, namely that the current “helicopter/snowplow” culture of control is backfiring, royally. It’s an honest if […]
Have It All, Ladies (and Gents)... Or Else!
A lot has already been said about Anne Marie Slaughter’s controversial cover story for The Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All”. Naturally, I hesitated to comment at first–do we really need another male point of view?–but as the debate raging around the article has shifted to somewhat more universal questions, e.g. what constitutes […]
The Insomnia Epidemic and Mother's (New) Little Helper
The NY Times recently published a worthy rejoinder to all the recent hubbub about the Mancession with a look into what has become something of an epidemic of sleeplessness among American women, “Sleep Medication: Mother’s New Little Helper.” We’re fond on this site of using 3am mental traffic as a barometer of what’s really going […]
The Problem: Sad Women & Baby Daddies; The Answer: Sexual Stigmas?
In an article that came out yesterday, a columnist mused on a recent study (by two economists at the National Bureau of Economics Research–the most boring club in Cambridge, MA, except when Larry Summers shows up) that showed women to be unhappier than men across the board–rich or poor, black or white, punk or prep. […]
