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The heat isn’t working in the clinic waiting room. A bronze bust of Margaret Sanger, patron saint of birth control, scrutinizes me from a plaster podium, and a slide show, Ways to Show Affection without Intercourse, is projected half on a pull-down screen and half on the cottage-cheese ceiling.
By Virginia EliotMay 2006In the Islamic Republic of Iran, honest self-expression carries a heavy price. Over the last six years, as many as a hundred print publications, including forty-one daily newspapers, have been closed by Iran’s hard-line judiciary. In April 2003 the Islamic Republic became the first government to take direct action against bloggers. Many more bloggers and online journalists have been arrested or intimidated since.
By Nasrin AlaviApril 2006In the past Muslims understood that the message of Islam is contained in very specific teachings, and that other teachings in the Koran are very Arabian in character. Unfortunately, some present-day Muslims — and they are properly called “fundamentalists” — do not look at the historical context of the Koran’s teachings, and so they want to transplant those Arabian teachings exactly as they are into twenty-first-century society.
By Krista BremerApril 2006Look at it this way: Keeping a child on welfare costs about sixteen hundred dollars a year in cash and services. To keep that same child in foster care costs about six thousand dollars a year. And if that child winds up in prison, the cost is around twenty thousand dollars a year. Most governments figured out a long time ago that welfare is the cheapest way to keep people out of institutions — and also to keep them from taking to the streets to protest their poverty.
By Pat MacEnultyAugust 2004The definition is much broader now that feminist ideas have spread throughout the culture. I would say that anybody who wants to call herself a feminist is a feminist. In addition, there are “applied feminists” — to borrow the writer Carolyn Heilbrun’s wonderful term — meaning someone who may not call herself a feminist but who lives like one. In the early days, there was a lot of debate about who was a real feminist. At the beginning of any movement, definitions seem to matter more. In the late sixties, there was a sense that we were just a handful of people. As the movement spread, we were very worried about being co-opted. So whether or not a newcomer was a “true” feminist seemed to matter, especially if that person was representing feminism in the media; there was a lot of mistrust of the media. We didn’t want to give up on our larger ideals and settle for something less.
By Leora TanenbaumJune 1998Besides teaching sixth- and seventh-grade English, I’m also homeroom teacher for the entire seventh grade, which consists of forty-nine girls who are impossible to tell apart as they all appear to be named Lisa and wear identical outfits — white blouses, green skirts, green knee socks.
By Jennie LittJune 1998My lover is fat. It upsets some people to hear me state this so baldly. “Doesn’t it hurt her feelings?” they ask, as if the polite thing were to act as if I hadn’t noticed that my lover weighs nearly three hundred pounds. Perhaps they think she hasn’t noticed, either — that, upon reading what I have written, she will realize for the very first time that she is fat.
By Judith JoyceNovember 1997We’re being told that medicine is supposed to get rid of disabled people — either by curing us or killing us. This idea is deeply rooted in industrial culture. I think there will be tremendous social pressure to “choose” suicide in the future.
By Jeanie Wylie-KellermannDecember 1996Living beyond my means in a Manhattan apartment with two babies, no income, and a philandering husband, I suddenly found myself as vulnerable and dependent as any traditional suburban housewife.
By Alix Kates ShulmanMay 1996From the moment menstruation begins and the first drop of fertile blood appears, girls are trained to fear unwanted pregnancies. I remember well my initiation into the disquieting ways of my body: as my mother and I walked down the wet slate path toward the car, she turned to me, paused momentarily, and said, “We’ll help you out if you get into trouble.” (Trouble. A code word for pregnancy, dead ends, the facts of life not yet discussed.)
By Diana Stuart GreeneAugust 1995Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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