Category: Uncategorized

So, I find myself thinking what at first blush feels like a very un-feminist thought: Enough already with the special exceptions in academia for women who choose to be mothers. Yes, give them reasonable maternity leaves, on-site day care, nursing rooms. But forget about dragging out the tenure clock beyond a full semester maternity leave,…

And now, a public service announcement about genitals. (This oughta increase my website traffic, not that I need that given my overwhelmed email in-box….) So it happened again this week: an innocent reporter calls to ask me to comment on a story about a person in the news who supposedly was born with “both male…

I just did four states in ten days: Illinois, New York, Michigan, and finally Florida. Even for me, that was either one state too many, or five days too little. I travel a lot. I know that mostly because people constantly remark upon it. Besides commuting 220 miles each way for my annual teaching, I…

I could not help but notice that many of my academic friends and favorite blogs expressed a serious thrill about two particular things in President Obama’s inaugural address: his promise to “restore science to its rightful place”; and his mentioning of “non-believers” in the list of religious types. My friends and favorite blogs didn’t mention…

I am at that stage of the book I am working on where I wake up, about every third day, feeling like the cat who has fixed on its prey: my whole being seems focused exactly on the placewhere I will soon pounce. It is as if my body is completely still, save perhaps for…

The title of this blog refers ostensibly to the news media’s continued fascination with the Obama family’s quest for a dog to bring to the White House. But it also refers to the code name that was given to an episode of the Ellen DeGeneres show, years ago, when the producers decided to have Ellen…

I am posting this because I shared it with a friend who wants now to share it with others. A little background is required on this. This is a letter I wrote today to an Illinois friend, a white guy (that’s relevant here), who probably won’t vote in November. He pro-Obama and sees no point…

(This satire is inspired by a call for papers for a volume about treatments of sexuality in various cultures; in the CFP, the editors-to-be specified that they “are looking for authors who are themselves from the culture under discussion”. This got me thinking about a world where all research were limited thus….) DATELINE: Washington, D.C.…

(Written sitting in a hotel in Vancouver, B.C….) The mate had a poker game Friday night, so I indulged myself by sitting down in our family room to quilt while watching “The Devil Wears Prada.” It was obvious from the direction that the audience is supposed to feel contemptuous of the Meryl Streep character. We’re…

My friend Dan Savage and I got to talking recently about how we are hampered in terms of writing about our personal lives. Now, anyone who knows Dan’s oeuvre or my oeuvre might find laughable the idea that we consider ourselves hampered. We each have written quite a bit about our intimate lives. I mean, his book, The Kid, is one of…