Debbie says: One of the many good things about Nicholas Day’s article in Slate about the science of breast milk is that, pretty close to the beginning, he goes out of his way to say that “conversations about lactation always seem to require disclaimers,” and his is that lack of breast milk has never been [...]

Debbie says: I’m not an early adopter and I didn’t know that Google Glass was coming out. I don’t even have a smart phone. I am, however, a lifelong science fiction reader and I think that having an earpiece that hooks to your glasses and gives you the internet is essentially–at least theoretically-super-cool. I want [...]

Lesley A Hall is an archivist at the Wellcome Library, London and a historian who has published extensively on issues on gender, sexuality and bodies in the nineteenth and twentieth century UK. Her most recent publication is Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1880, 2nd edition (Palgrave, 2012). Check out her website and [...]

Laurie says: As I’ve written, my photo of Bob Guter was chosen my the National Museum of Art in Osaka to represent my work in the 35th anniversary catalogue of their permanent collection, issued in 2012. They have 12 of my photos in their permanent collection, and this was their choice for the catalogue. Each [...]

Laurie and Debbie say: Ampersand at Alas! a Blog wrote an excellent response to last month’s article in Scientific American, “Men and Women Can’t Be Just Friends” by Adrian Ward. We only had to look at the title to know the article was wrong, because we and everyone we know has lasting friendships with people [...]

Lynne Murray says: My name for the way television culture skillfully and constantly tells us what’s beautiful, sexy, and hot–and what isn’t–is “Team Entertainment-Fueled Eating Disorders,” a team whose only goal is to dominate and destroy our traditional cultures and our own personal perceptions, which I call “Team Just the Way We Are.” Recently while [...]

Debbie says: I never blogged Alice Dreger‘s fascinating TED talk, “Is Anatomy Destiny?” on biology, bioethics and gender when I watched it last year, but her name stuck in my memory. The talk is available at the link, and I recommend it highly. Now she and two co-authors have published a truly horrific situation in [...]

Debbie says: The title of this post is a response to James Braly’s statement, “Most women think their breasts are theirs,” blogging in a recent column in the New York Times Style section. His argument is that “Extended breastfeeding, the current scientific thinking goes, offers significant health benefits for the child, and probably for the [...]

Lynne Murray says: I like to read urban paranormal novels in part because the heroines demonstrate their power in a very literal way. The magic used in these stories, which causes visible effects, is sometimes  accompanied by fictional “power words.” This post is about real-life power words. I can’t write from first-hand experience about wounds [...]

Laurie says: This picture, of Karl Michalak and his tiger was the poster for my solo exhibition at the National Museum of Art in Osaka, Japan in 2001. I am not a woman. I don’t know what it’s like to be raped. I don’t pretend to have any privileged insights Into the feminine psyche. But [...]