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, […]
Author: Audrey Bilger
Audrey Bilger is the current president of Reed College, and previously served as vice president and dean of Pomona College. She is also a former professor of literature at Claremont McKenna College and faculty director of the Center for Writing and Public Discourse. She also teaches gender studies, and occasionally yoga. Her latest book, which she co-edited with Michele Kort, is Here Come the Brides! Reflections on Lesbian Love and Marriage (Seal Press, 2012). She is also the author of Laughing Feminism, editor of an edition of Jane Collier’s 1753 satire "An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting," and a frequent contributor to Bitch magazine. Her work has been featured in The Paris Review, Rockrgrl, the Huffington Post and the Women's Media Center.
There’s No Such Thing as Gay Marriage
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, […]
Mind The Gender Gap
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 […]
The Dark and Terrifying C-Street “Family”
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 […]
More Reasons to Come Out
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 […]
10 Years of “Feminism is for Everybody”
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 […]
Serious Laughs: Laura Linney in “The Big C”
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 […]
Breaking News: CA Gay Marriages To Resume Next Week
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 […]
The Villain Uncloaked: The Prop. 8 Story as Gothic Novel
A “page-turner,” “better than any novel you could be reading.” Such was the praise Rachel Maddow bestowed on the Proposition 8 ruling by Judge Vaughn Walker, issued last week at the conclusion of the historic federal trial. She might have added that the 136-page decision has many of the features of a summer blockbuster: an […]
Post-Prop. 8, A More Feminist World
The word “feminism” does not appear anywhere in Judge Vaughn Walker’s 136-page ruling that California’s ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8, is unconstitutional. However, this impressive document draws heavily upon feminism’s contributions to our society. Judge Walker’s sweeping condemnation of Prop. 8 relies on feminist ideas about the roles of men and women within marriage […]