We need to stop playing Privilege or Oppression Olympics because we’ll never get anywhere until we find more effective ways of talking through difference. We should be able to say, This is my truth, a...
Trigger warnings aren’t meant for those of us who don’t believe in them, just like the Bible wasn’t written for atheists. Trigger warnings are designed for the people who need and believe in that safe...
There’s nothing easy about what you’re dealing with but you need to face that and step up. Michael
There would always be ransoms for any dignity or peace.
There is a happily-ever-after, but the price exacted is terribly high. It is frightening to consider how many women might be willing to pay that price.
The problem is, cultural critics talk about privilege with such alarming frequency and in such empty ways, we have diluted the word’s meaning. When people wield the word privilege, it tends to fall on...
The past is written on my body.
The more successful I get, the more I am reminded that in the minds of a great many people I will never be anything more than my body. No matter what I accomplish, I will be fat, first and foremost.
Still, I keep coming back to the relative impunity with which the men in This Is How You Lose Her get to behave badly, and to the tone of the critical reception to these stories, which are not only st...
Some serious Scrabble players are poor losers. I am a good loser. I love Scrabble so much I don’t care if I lose. I also have to be a good loser because I lose a lot, so practicality plays a role.
Rosin is not wrong that life has improved in measurable ways for women, but she is wrong in suggesting that better is good enough.
Perhaps, then, unlikable characters, the ones who are the most human, are also the ones who are most alive. Perhaps this intimacy makes us uncomfortable because we don't dare be so alive.
One of my biggest weaknesses, one that has always shamed me, is that I have always been lonely. I've struggled to make friends because I can be socially awkward, because I'm weird, because I live in m...
On bad days, though, I forget how to separate my personality, the heart of who I am, from my body. I forget how to shield myself from the cruelties of the world.
My other wardrobe, the one that dominates most of my closet, is full of the clothes I don’t have the courage to wear.
My family’s concern became a constant chorus of nagging, always well intended, but mostly a reminder of how I was a failure in the most basic of my human responsibilities—maintaining my body.
Most black movies, for better or worse, carry a burden of expectation, having to be everything to everyone because we have so little to choose from. Suffice
Marissa Mayer, who was appointed president and CEO of Yahoo! in July 2012, said in an interview, I don’t think that I would consider myself a feminist. I think that I certainly believe in equal rights...
Marcy leaned forward to study the landscaping, tall cypresses encircled by Peruvian lilies looming over the guardhouse. She sighed, said, This is a bit much. Her husband said, Baby, people love the il...
Look at white men when they are accused of having privilege. They tend to be immediately defensive (and, at times, understandably so). They say, It’s not my fault I am a white man, or I’m [insert othe...