Tagged as: girls and women

Going Offline: 10 Fabulous Books to Read With Your Kids This Summer

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In today’s world of ubiquitous personal and mobile screens, family time is becoming harder and harder to come by, and is often framed or fractured by children’s (and parents’) prioritization of digital socializing over the in-person relationships right there inside the home. Family book clubs are educational and are a great way to encourage reading, enhance parent-child bonding and provide enjoyable experiences for everyone offline. They can also serve as a very helpful tool for parents because sharing children’s and YA literature allows parents a side door into tricky conversations with their children about some of the challenging issues they face while growing up, such as cyberbullying or navigating early romantic relationships. Read more…

Harem-seeking men use legalization of gay marriage to pursue legal right to hoard women

feminist current

I just can’t take it. Gay marriage becomes the law of the land in the U.S., we all rejoice, and now we have Montana jackass, Nathan Collier, storming the Yellowstone County Courthouse for a second marriage license so that he may become a legal bigamist, crediting Chief Justice John Roberts’ dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges as opening the door to the possibility of this marital windfall. Well, give the man some Golden Grizzly Ale and a dozen Rocky Mountain oysters! And he’s not alone — others are queued up behind him, sights set on the Supreme Court, excited to increase the number of sammiches and sexytimes coming their way. Read more…

Here’s What It Would Look Like If We Treated Our Sons Like Our Daughters, From Birth Through College

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Come with me. Let’s open the door to a parallel universe. You unlock this door with a key of imagination, just like on The Twilight Zone.

Here in this parallel world, the rules are different because gender roles are flipped.

Loving parents and teachers accept this strange culture as if it’s not so bad, or perhaps even good. As if the reverse of this culture could exist only in the minds of fiction writers or lunatics.

As we travel together, let’s observe the childhood of one baby boy, born into this alternate reality, as seen through the eyes of his mother. Read more…

 

How Highly Gendered Toys Present an Exclusively Heterosexual Worldview to Children

toys

Today’s children are more likely to see two men or two women holding hands, more likely to have a friend or relative who is openly gay and more likely to have a schoolmate who has two moms or two dads. But when girls and boys walk into a toy store in 2015, they see a significantly more gendered, heteronormative arrangement and selection of toys than I did as a girl forty years ago! Toys, grouped by gender, are prescriptive of gender roles. It is not only a problem of limiting the ways to be a girl or a boy, as I have written about extensively. It is also a problem of promoting an exclusively heterosexual worldview. Read more…

Finding New Friends After 50 Is The Holy Grail

Holy Grail

I think I’m getting ruminative in my menopausal fugue—solidly on the other side of divorce, career reinvention, and starting over in a new place with a new love. I have almost all new friends now, at 51.

The ones I spent so many years with—bound together by our children’s friendships and lots of school potlucks—scattered like dandelion seeds to the wind when my first marriage ended. Only Ebola instills more fear of contagion than the divorce of a friend whose marriage seemed perfect. Read more…

Finding New Friends After 50 Is The Holy Grail

friends photo

I think I’m getting ruminative in my menopausal fugue — solidly on the other side of divorce, career reinvention, and starting over in a new place with a new love. I have almost all new friends now, at 51. The ones I spent so many years with — bound together by our children’s friendships and lots of school potlucks — scattered like dandelion seeds to the wind when my first marriage ended. Only Ebola instills more fear of contagion than the divorce of a friend whose marriage seemed perfect. Read more…

The tyranny of the anecdote: Irrational fear of false rape accusations based on one-off stories trumpeted by media

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If you are the mother of a son and are worried that your son will be falsely accused of rape, your time would be much better spent worrying that your son will be fairly accused of rape, because the odds are far greater that he will actually be a rapist than be falsely identified as one. The low incidence of false rape claims is extremely similar to the low incidence of false reporting of all other crimes, such as mugging claims or identity theft claims, and we do not hear anyone thrashing and screaming about all the people unjustly ensnared by other people who lie about thievery, and the need to roll back the penalties for such crimes due to all the false reporting. No. Only the crime of rape is widely subjected to the tyranny of the anecdote. Read more…

Aging While Female Is Not Your Worst Nightmare

aging

I’m going to tell you a story that is so common and so troubling it is effectively split off from the emotional lives of young women, tucked away into whatever neural recesses exist for the purpose of shelving information that feels irrelevant yet distantly threatening. I wonder if young women will read this? The irony is that they probably won’t, and the silently nodding heads will be ones that are graying, like mine. Read more…

Aging While Female Is Not Your Worst Nightmare

Role Reboot

I’m going to tell you a story that is so common and so troubling it is effectively split off from the emotional lives of young women, tucked away into whatever neural recesses exist for the purpose of shelving information that feels irrelevant yet distantly threatening. I wonder if young women will read this? The irony is that they probably won’t, and the silently nodding heads will be ones that are graying, like mine. Read more…

Aging While Female Is Not Your Worst Nightmare

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I’m going to tell you a story that is so common and so troubling it is effectively split off from the emotional lives of young women, tucked away into whatever neural recesses exist for the purpose of shelving information that feels irrelevant yet distantly threatening. I wonder if young women will read this? The irony is that they probably won’t, and the silently nodding heads will be ones that are graying, like mine. Read more…

If Our Sons Were Treated Like Our Daughters

WYSK

Come with me. Let’s open the door to a parallel universe. You unlock this door with a key of imagination, just like on The Twilight Zone. Here in this parallel world, the rules are different because gender roles are flipped. Loving parents and teachers accept this strange culture as if it’s not so bad, or perhaps even good. As if the reverse of this culture could exist only in the minds of fiction writers or lunatics.

As we travel together, let’s observe the childhood of one baby boy, born into this alternate reality, as seen through the eyes of his mother. Read more…

Ageism In The Media: Why Are We Invisible?

Better After 50

His hair is always gray. Hers is usually blonde, or any other color but gray. He’s got some road behind him—you can tell by a few telltale wrinkles. She looks like a slim, youthful 35.

If these stock photos were used for generic articles about sex and relationships, I’d think, Yeah yeah yeah…older man, younger woman…blah blah blah. But when they are used as the lead image within the article or on social media for essays about marriage, dating, or sex during middle age, I object. And oh do I cringe. Read more…

If Our Sons Were Treated Like Our Daughters

Role Reboot

Come with me. Let’s open the door to a parallel universe. You unlock this door with a key of imagination, just like on The Twilight Zone. Here in this parallel world, the rules are different because gender roles are flipped. Loving parents and teachers accept this strange culture as if it’s not so bad, or perhaps even good. As if the reverse of this culture could exist only in the minds of fiction writers or lunatics.

As we travel together, let’s observe the childhood of one baby boy, born into this alternate reality, as seen through the eyes of his mother. Read more…

If Our Sons Were Treated Like Our Daughters

HuffPo

Come with me. Let’s open the door to a parallel universe. You unlock this door with a key of imagination, just like on The Twilight Zone. Here in this parallel world, the rules are different because gender roles are flipped. Loving parents and teachers accept this strange culture as if it’s not so bad, or perhaps even good. As if the reverse of this culture could exist only in the minds of fiction writers or lunatics.

As we travel together, let’s observe the childhood of one baby boy, born into this alternate reality, as seen through the eyes of his mother: Read more…

Why Do Articles About Middle-Aged Relationships Use Photos Of Middle-Aged Men With Younger Women?

Rolle Reboot

His hair is always gray. Hers is usually blonde, or any other color but gray. He’s got some road behind him—you can tell by a few telltale wrinkles. She looks like a slim, youthful 35.

If these stock photos were used for generic articles about sex and relationships, I’d think, Yeah yeah yeah…older man, younger woman…blah blah blah. But when they are used as the lead image within the article or on social media for essays about marriage, dating, or sex during middle age, I object. And oh do I cringe. Read more…

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