DoubleX Gabfest: The Babies, Books, and Beaches Edition
Listen to Slate’s show about women losing in court while gays are winning, surrogacy, and summer reading.
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In this week’s Gabfest, Slate senior editor Jessica Winter joins Outward editor June Thomas and New York editor Noreen Malone to discuss why women are losing ground in the courts while gays are gaining, surrogacy, and beach reading. Is Infinite Jest a beach read, or will it just weigh down your tote bag?
Some of items discussed in the episode:
- Jay Michaelson’s Daily Beast article on why women are losing in the courts while gays are winning.
- Mark Joseph Stern’s response to Michaelson.
- Stern’s piece on why the Hobby Lobby decision is good for gays.
- Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men.
- The Science of Us post on why people get enraged when women have sex.
- Amanda Marcotte’s Slate piece about why women having sex makes Rush Limbaugh so angry.
- The New York Times article on couples coming to the United States to find gestational surrogates.
- A long Sarasota Herald-Tribune article on being an egg donor.
- Alex Kuczynski’s New York Times article on having her son through surrogacy.
- The viral photo of Toronto’s “Pride baby” with and without the birth mother.
- Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace.
- Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy.
- War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy.
- Politico’s roundup of what politicians are reading this summer.
- The Power Broker, by Robert Caro.
DoubleX recommendations:
Noreen recommends The Darlings, by Christina Alger. It’s a Madoff-esque story of a billionaire Park Avenue family during the 2008 financial crisis.
June recommends Longmire on A&E. It’s a crime drama that takes place in a big sky, fictitious county in Wyoming.
Jessica wants everyone to watch the 1982 horror movie Poltergeist. It is an endearing portrait of a strong marriage and cool parenthood. It’s also a bonanza of early Spielberg horror and has the greatest childbirth scene that is not a childbirth scene, which is admittedly a narrow category.
DoubleX plugs:
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