June 12, 2013 • 11 notes

Best of Craigslist “Missed Connection” posts from Portland’s World Naked Bike Ride this weekend.

June 7, 2013 • 6 notes
Numerous books and articles have lamented the choices twenty-something women have these days. A rethinking of the traditional roles around gender and sexuality has left our generation without a roadmap for relationships. Frances Ha is an eminently enjoyable rejection of the notion that too much choice can be a bad thing. Instead, Frances embraces the mess in her life and learns from it. Moving between jobs, relationships, friends, and apartments helps Frances grow up—choosing between options (and making frequent mistakes) helps her discern for herself who she is and what she wants. As a deep self-confidence replaces youthful enthusiasm, Frances finds her own way to becoming a smart, talented, flawed woman who will still dance all over New York with her friends. 

Numerous books and articles have lamented the choices twenty-something women have these days. A rethinking of the traditional roles around gender and sexuality has left our generation without a roadmap for relationships. Frances Ha is an eminently enjoyable rejection of the notion that too much choice can be a bad thing. Instead, Frances embraces the mess in her life and learns from it. Moving between jobs, relationships, friends, and apartments helps Frances grow up—choosing between options (and making frequent mistakes) helps her discern for herself who she is and what she wants. As a deep self-confidence replaces youthful enthusiasm, Frances finds her own way to becoming a smart, talented, flawed woman who will still dance all over New York with her friends. 

June 3, 2013 • 5 notes • bitch-media

bitch-media:

Baltimore-based arts group FORCE wants to install this temporary monument to survivors of sexual assault on the National Mall. Read all about it and back their Kickstarter! 

May 27, 2013 • 9,541 notes • flyawaydog

(via badatpeople)

April 11, 2013 • 1,720 notes • storyboard
storyboard: Welcome to the Museum of Copulatory Organs It all started with a flea circus. This is the story of Maria Fernanda Cardoso, whose biology-based artwork progressed from her very own circus of live fleas to detailed models of nature’s most intricate and unlikely reproductive systems. Industrial design, electron microscopy, and 3D printing were all brought to bear, and the results are fascinating. This story, created in partnership with Symbolia and Popular Science, was illustrated and animated by Andy Warner. “My father is a marine biologist who specialized in fish sex change,” says Warner, “and I grew up learning about weird and wonderful animal behavior and morphology at the dinner table.” Read More

storyboard:

Welcome to the Museum of Copulatory Organs

It all started with a flea circus. This is the story of Maria Fernanda Cardoso, whose biology-based artwork progressed from her very own circus of live fleas to detailed models of nature’s most intricate and unlikely reproductive systems. Industrial design, electron microscopy, and 3D printing were all brought to bear, and the results are fascinating.

This story, created in partnership with Symbolia and Popular Science, was illustrated and animated by Andy Warner. “My father is a marine biologist who specialized in fish sex change,” says Warner, “and I grew up learning about weird and wonderful animal behavior and morphology at the dinner table.”

Read More

April 4, 2013 • 1 note
Monogamy Episode
Bitch Media
Popaganda Podcast

A riveting 20-minute podcast about the strange legal history, current politics, and straight up logistics of monogamy. Hosted by me! And featuring sex educator Tristan Taormino along with the author of Sex and Punishment, Eric Berkowitz. 

March 21, 2013 • 9 notes

Feminist Advice Column: Should I Come Out as Poly?

Dear Ms. Opinionated,

I’m involved in two healthy, fulfilling polyamorous relationships. I’m not ashamed of the way I live and love, even though some might consider it odd or morally wrong. Generally, I prefer to keep my private life private, but I don’t want to lie about or hide who I am. I wasted far too many years miserable in the closet before I came out as a lesbian. I’m no longer afraid to come out as gay because same-sex relationships are gaining more and more acceptance in society. Coming out as poly is a different story because it is much less understood or accepted.

I want to tell you that the world is fair. But it’s not.

Not everyone’s going to like you, and not everyone’s going to respect your choices. It doesn’t matter how normative your choices supposedly are, nor how much you try to make people like you: universal love, respect and acceptance is not going to come your way (or anyone’s way). And that’s okay—if you make your peace with it. All you can do is make the choices that are right for you and the people affected by them, choose how and when to share or not-share relevant or non-relevant information of your life based on your own comfort level and let the rest go. So while it’s important to recognize that there might—and I stress “might”—be life-consequences that you don’t like for even the choices you make that are positive for you, you don’t have to let those potential consequences dictate what you choose to do. It’s good to plan for the consequences (I’m a fan of back-up plans and back-ups to the back-up plans), but not as good to decide by default that the determining factor in your choices is other people’s (potential) reactions.

Abridged from Bitch Media’s feminist advice column.

March 19, 2013 • 20 notes

It’s hard to believe these quotes are over 100 years old! They’re all still way-to-relevant today. My friend Kristin Rogers Brown and I made these for Bitch Media. 

January 8, 2013 • 6 notes

Big News!

Sex From Scratch will be published in spring of 2014 by Microcosm Publishing. 

I’m excited to work with Microcosm—they allow authors ample freedom to write excellent books and do all the drudgery of lining up distribution, sales, and all those small details about how to actually get the book to the readers. 

Now all I have to do is actually finish the book. That’s the easy part, right? 

December 13, 2012 • 5 notes

Gays Aren’t Ruining Marriage—They’re Saving It.

Kids these days, we’re not so excited about marriage. Ask anyone under 30: Forty-four percent of us will tell you that “marriage is becoming obsolete,” according to a Pew Research Center study, and 46 percent of us will say that “the growing variety of family arrangements is a good thing.” We’ll get married later than ever before, or not at all: Only 51 percent of Americans older than 18 are married, while the number of newlyweds shrinks every year.

Yet this past week has been a nationwide celebration of marriage, as LGBT couples in Washington State finally got to tie the knot that right-wingers have kept tangled for decades. In Seattle, 489 couples applied for marriage licenses on the first day same-sex couples could apply, more than 10 times the usual daily traffic. Getting anywhere near the internet over the weekend guaranteed a deluge of wedding photos and well wishes proclaiming, “Hooray for marriage!”

But what is marriage good for, really, besides the cake and the tax break?

I think much of the gap between excitement around same-sex marriage seen this week and growing apathy toward the institution expressed by young people boils down to one idea: legitimacy.

I’m at the exact average age of first marriage for American women (26.5) and unlike queer couples ecstatic to get hitched, marriage isn’t relevant to my life right now.

As a straight person, I have the privilege of normalcy. I’ve been dating the same guy for four years and while I’m sure he’d look great slow dancing in a steampunk tuxedo (Tentative wedding theme: “Arr love is true!”), there are very few cultural forces pushing us to get married besides pure romance. We don’t believe in sin, we both support ourselves financially, we already live together, and we’re not going to have kids anytime soon.

We have plenty of non-marriage ways to show our love; if I had money to spare, I’d spend it on a vacation together, not 100 wedding invitations letterpressed to look like old-timey airships. But most importantly, whether we’re at the movies, the hospital, or family Thanksgiving, people accept my relationship with my boyfriend, no questions asked. No one has ever taken a look at him and asked when I’ll get over this phase. With this acceptance, and our cohabitating lifestyle, marriage seems rather pointless.

I take the right for granted.

Sunday, December 9, couldn’t have been any more gray and miserable in Vancouver, Washington. But it was a beautiful day for the gay and lesbian couples who came to the Clark County building to get married as soon as they legally could. As wives Bridget and Janine Connell waited with their small, adorable daughters for their legal witness, I asked what role legitimizing their relationship had to do with their decision to marry.

“We’re getting married because we love each other. We deserve to be equal,” said Bridget. Janine nodded: “We’re a family, we want to cement that.”

Surrounded by friends and family under the county building’s rotunda, Hawaiian-shirt-clad grooms Doug and Wayne Myers-Funk echoed similar ideas. Both religious, they would have married the year after they met—1980—if it had been legal. They’ve already had two commitment ceremonies and think those rituals, and Sunday’s, help Wayne’s conservative Mormon family accept them.

“We went through a period of them not accepting us, of having to leave the Christmas gifts on the front door,” said Doug, shortly before kissing his new husband. “With this, they realize it’s not just a phase.”