Mesmerizing. I'd also add PuPaul & Big Freedia's "Peanut Butter" for your consideration.

This is exactly what Starling was writing about in this excellent post back in 2009, on the fabulous blog Shapely Prose (RIP Shapely Prose). She called it "Schrodinger's Rapist," and it was about precisely this phenomenon of men putting their wants and needs over those of women, even when they realized that the woman…

That perfume is just getting too darned uppity, and needed to be taken down a few pegs! ... On the other hand, I totally get (and agree with) what you're saying about people on the internet being kind of awful about distinguishing between "not for me" and "this thing sucks and no one should like it". It doesn't make…

If I were a person who was really into perfumes (I wear a scent sometimes, but I'm not particularly knowledgeable or excited about them), I think I'd want to know what it is about the scent of this perfume that makes it so darned expensive. I mean, I'm really into Guitar Hero recently, and I'd be excited about a new…

This is (one of the many reasons) why Octavia Butler is superior to Stephenie Meyer. Her immortal-ish vampires basically did this—they became researchers, genetic engineers, etc. using their centuries of accumulated study.

You're right about Tuskegee, but there's more to it than what you've mentioned. For example, not only were the participants in the Tuskegee experiments not receiving treatment, they were actively blocked from seeking treatment elsewhere; the experiment continued even after penicillin was widely available, and the…

In fact, science agrees with you! Sociologist Jennifer Reich's recent article in Gender & Society finds that middle- and upper-class families are the most likely to refuse vaccines on principle. http://www.socwomen.org/2014/08/26/pr6…

I get as irritated as the next person when one of my FB friends posts a rant about "toxins," autism-causing vaccines, or some other ominous, vaguely sourced health claim. However, looking at the actual medical conspiracies that the researchers tested, I'd argue that this study shows something more than, simply,…

I'd like to see a companion piece that goes around asking men "What makes you feel beautiful?" "What makes you feel fabulous?" "How do you pamper yourself?" and so on. There's nothing wrong WITH feeling beautiful or fabulous or whatever, but why is it only women who are expected to feel that way?

HUSH YOUR MOUTH. On the other hand, I so love John Cameron Mitchell as Hedwig, I don't know how I'd feel about seeing anyone else in the role. Even someone as awesome as Michael C. Hall.

Education may work for low-income folks—though affordable, reliable healthcare would be an even better way of vaccinating poor kids. For the large bulk of anti-vaccine people who are middle- and upper-class, though, I have my doubts about whether education would make a difference. (see a recent study published by…

The big change in BMI categories was in 1998. On one hand, this graph does account for that (it uses consistent BMI %'s across years—so, looking at people who had BMIs of 30+ in all the years, not people who were categorized as "obese" given the definition in that particular year). On the other hand, as a measure of…

I'd highly recommend Dorothy Roberts' book, Killing the Black Body. It's not exactly light reading, but advocates a concept she calls "reproductive justice": not just protecting women's right to avoid pregnancy and parenthood, but also protecting the rights of women to become mothers if they so choose. A lot of the…

It's not really an either/or situation. Of course it's important for people to know about the effects on families, parents, etc. But if they're making a decision based on what they believe the child's quality of life will be, we owe it to them to give them the best, most honest information to use in making that…

You absolutely should be on Jezebel! Disability rights are so closely tied to rights for women, queer folks, people of color, and basically anyone who wants to exist in this world and be treated like a human being, even if their body or life trajectory doesn't conform to the healthy, productive, (often male) worker…

It is possible to be deeply concerned about disability-based abortion, while also respecting the right of individual women and families to choose whether and when to have a baby.

Listen, amazon, I don't know how else to say this but I agree with you that there is some serious racist crap happening here and it seems that a lot of the people doing that are women. That's important, and I'm glad that folks on here are talking about it. And I was serious when I said someone—maybe you—should write…

I'm pretty sure I said:

The points you and other folks are making on here—that white women are implicated in systems of racist (and classist, ableist, etc.) oppression—is an important one. And there are some important things to be said about the unique ways that women contribute to those systems (in otherwise "feminist" spaces, as employers…

You know, I want to say this is weird... but as a professor, I've gotten some pretty weird excuses from students who plan to be absent. The student who wanted to be excused from an oral presentation because she screamed so loud at a college football game that she lost her voice (her school spirit was laudable, but I…