gender – Going Medieval

On conflating drag, (and femininity), with sexuality

This week in Texas, America’s Most Normal State(™) one brave lawmaker has sprung into action to protect children. Don’t worry though, he didn’t decide that he was gonna, you know, do anything about the epidemic of violent white supremacy and the violence that easy access to guns for radicalised people can unleash on classrooms full of innocent school children. Oh no. The brave Bryan Slaton has elected, instead, to introduce a ban on allowing children to attend drag shows. Here is the brave brave little guy’s announcement:

On men born in the Summer

As I write this I am fully aware that there are, as ever, terrible things going on around us, over which we have no control. In many cases I feel that these things can be connected to our social values and the cultural connections we have with our past. This week I don’t wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about a very pressing Twitter question. To whit: fellas, is it feminine to be born in the Summer? And more specifically is it feminine to be born in June and July?

On constructing the “ideal” woman

This morning I started my day by treating myself to a long read with my cup of coffee. In this case, the long read in question was Emily Ratajkowski’s excellent, disturbing, and important “Buying Myself Back”, an excerpt from her upcoming book of essays printed in New York Magazine. It is in many ways a harrowing read (Content Warning – it recounts a sexual assault), but I bring it up because Ms. Ratajkowski so deftly describes the personal experience of something that I have been writing about a lot lately: the male gaze and women’s ability, or indeed inability, to assert themselves against a constructed “ideal”.