YES. In addition to the "I don't see myself reflected in the pictures on Jezebel (or other sites like it)" issue, for me there's the "I don't see the kind of people I'm attracted to" issue. I'm mainly attracted to genderqueer and androgynous gender presentation (mostly in masculine-of-center/butch/tomboyish women),…

I know it's a common saying, but "doesn't really have a leg to stand on" is an unfortunate choice of words for this particular case. :\

I don't know if people have, as you suggest, simply filed as married (I think that some people have done this as activism in past years, but I'm not sure). However, the sheer terror of getting audited for fraud (i.e., claiming to be married when the law says you're not) is what keeps most of us in line.

Except that because of Windsor, we do file joint *federal* taxes. So rather than each just filing as single, we have to do one set of forms as married, and then another set of forms as single. If you're trying to use tax preparation software like Turbo Tax, it gets even trickier (because it tries to be helpful by…

Spoken like a guy who's never gotten laid.

Wasn't trying to lecture you - I'm still figuring out how the commenting works on this new version of Kinja!

Makeup (and I'm including mascara and lip balm here) should not be the "standard," period - especially at the gym. I teach undergraduate Women's Studies classes, and many of my students tell me they wouldn't dream of setting foot outside without some sort of makeup, because people might see their actual face. It…

I absolutely agree with you that race and class (and other kinds of "Otherness") shape the type of coverage that murderers and other criminals get, but you've got ahold of the wrong end of the stick. When crimes happen—particularly horrific, seemingly senseless crimes like this one—I think it's a pretty good and…

What if the sentiment is "I'm not gay, but I'd be willing to try if it were with her"? Because that's how I usually use the term "girl crush."

I'm not really interested in policing anyone's particular use of this term. My point is merely to say that as it's used by a lot of Jezzies, the term "girl crush" tends to presume a shared heterosexuality among readers. If people were using the terms "girl crush" and "boy crush" in parallel ways, then I wouldn't feel…

I certainly get what you're saying - I think Joseph Gordon-Levitt is very pretty, though I wouldn't want to have sex with him - but we don't tend to call that a "boy crush." That's the part that feels heterosexist in how people use the term "girl crush"—that putting "girl" at the beginning negates the possibility of…

It's not my biggest pet peeve, but it's not misguided, either. "Girl crush" is basically the female version of "no homo." Because as great as it is that you like and admire another woman, at the end of the day you're adding a big old asterisk to it that says, "...but not in a GAY way."

Arkady was better than most of the other women who showed up in the series, I'll grant you that. Still, just as with Star Trek (TOS), I sometimes wish the authors would leave women out altogether rather than putting in some pretty insulting caricatures. I get that these authors are a product of their times, and I…

I read them, but they made me really mad. I guess reading too much Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, and Marion Zimmer Bradley has given me the unreasonable expectation that women will be written as actual people in sci fi.

Something I think feminist theory and histories have shown pretty convincingly is that, in a lot of cultures, men have maintained power over women in part by building up and valuing their relationships with men, while discouraging women's relationships with other women. While men had systems of patronage, workplace…

I'm using my favorite method of birth control: lots of gay, gay sex.

So nobody ever talks about them, but Tom Cruise actually has two other kids (Connor and Bella) whom he adopted with Nicole Kidman back when they were married. The fact that they're adopted doesn't make him any less their father - apparently they've lived with him since Kidman moved back to Australia. The more you…

So, Jezebel has been (rightly, in my mind) criticizing the trend toward near-nudity in women's Halloween costumes, and then two women who buck that trend are accused of wearing pajamas? Neither the Cowardly Lion nor Buzz Lightyear are known for having particularly form-fitting outfits, so it seems like these women…

[Spoilers]

Not to mention lady (and not-lady) teachers and researchers of other stripes: I and other professors I know have lost access to gov't websites like the Census Bureau and the National Parks Service that we use to access up-to-date statistics for use in our classes. Oops, I guess it hurts students, too.