Tina Fey isn’t afraid to throw around a few F-words in her new memoir, Bossypants. She stands up for funny women, and says to those who don’t like–or believe in the existence of–women comedians, “We don’t fucking care if you like it.” Throughout, she makes clear that she views herself as a feminist and offers [...]
Yesterday, more than seven months after same-sex marriage ban Proposition 8 was ruled unconstitutional, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided to prolong the wait for California gay couples who want to exercise their constitutional right to marry. After a federal judge overturned Prop 8 in August, the 9th Circuit stopped lesbian and gay couples [...]
You know you’ve arrived and are here to stay when you get your own coffee table book–and Erin McHugh’s photo-album tribute to out-proud gay women, The L Life: Extraordinary Lesbians Making a Difference, begs to be put on display. On the cover, Jane Lynch, identified within as the “lesbian ‘it’ girl,” gazes confidently at the viewer, [...]
There was a lot of name-calling in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday when Proposition 8 came up for review. Much of the discussion revolved around names–specifically which unions get to be called “marriage” and which are deemed undeserving of that privileged term. When Theodore Olson took the stand to oppose the marriage ban, [...]
This election season marks an important anniversary in the history of women and politics: the term gender gap turns 30. And since women voters as a group have tended to be more progressive [PDF] when it comes to issues like reproductive freedom, social welfare spending, and gay and lesbian rights, this seems an apt moment [...]
There aren’t many women in Jeff Sharlet’s new book C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy. In the world of the Family, the secretive U.S.-based religious network reported on by Sharlet, women play supporting roles at best. Most famously, they’re the wronged wives in sex scandals: Jenny Sanford (wife of Gov. Mark Sanford, he [...]
There’s been so much sad LGBT news in the past weeks, it can be hard to find reasons to celebrate National Coming Out Day. Another gay teen, Zach Harrington, of Norman, OK., killed himself this past weekend–the fifth gay teen suicide reported in the past two months–after being subjected to what family members described as [...]
At the dawn of this new millennium, bell hooks published Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, a slim, bright-yellow book with a powerful goal: to introduce feminist politics in an accessible format in order to reach the widest possible audience. She begins with a story of how proud she is to talk to everyone she [...]
In the opening scene of The Big C, a new series that premiered this week on Showtime, suburban schoolteacher and mom Cathy Jamison (played by Laura Linney) wears a bright, strained smile. It’s the people-pleasing, trying-to-be-nice smile that many women put on when they try to negotiate for what they want. In this case, Cathy [...]
Just a little over a week after the historic decision to overturn California’s marriage ban was issued, crowds assembled once more today in front of the federal courthouse in San Francisco to await a decision from Judge Vaughn Walker on when gay marriages can resume. When his ruling came down (PDF), it was another victory [...]
