Wednesday, May 20, 2009 - Posts
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Judy Berman writes a great story today in Salon's Broadsheet about transgender activists
fighting to remove "gender identity disorder" as a category in the DSM,
the Bible of psychiatric diseases. The activists argue that they are
making the same case gay activists made in the 1970s, when they fought
successfully to get "homosexuality" removed as a mental illness. Only,
as I wrote in a story earlier this year in the Atlantic, it's not quite so simple.
For adults, the activists' case seems fairly straightforward. Strong
feelings of identification with the opposite gender recur throughout... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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If you're interested in adding another woman-authored blog to your list, I recommend Sarah Scott's Mayday Productions. A former Martha Stewart employee, Scott ended up "tits-up in a ditch," as she put it to me once in a line borrowed from the title of an Annie Proulx short story,
when she was in a cycling race accident in 2005. "I don't remember if
the EMT woke me up, or I just came too on my own, but I remember
looking down at my thighs and thinking... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website at DoubleX.com)
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When the focus of an economy changes from making stuff to helping
people—that is, manufacturing to services—low-skilled men drop out of
the labor market in droves. A new study of unemployed men in Manchester, England,
suggests that "idealized embodied masculinity" is partly to blame.
Manual labor, claims Sociologist Darren Nixon, imbues working class men
with a sense of pride that helps compensate for the very fact of being
working class. They may not be financially dominant, but they feel
relatively masculine compared to their white, middle class counterparts.
The kind of low-skill jobs that service economies
create—receptionists, sales clerks, retail cashiers—offer no such
compensation. And the men Nixon interviews find the "emotional labor"
required to perform such jobs well incredibly... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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As Slate columnist John Dickerson pointed out late last week,
by saying that the CIA "misleads us all the time," Nancy Pelosi "put
the spotlight on herself and has given weakened Republicans a fight
they can enjoy, engage in, and possibly win." Newt Gingrich took to the
Daily Show last night to promote his new book, 5 Principles for a Successful Life, but before getting into the heart of his shill, he called for... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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I really, really wanted to love Glee, the new Fox comedy about show choir—that strange, unholy amalgam of drama club, choir, and dance team. After all, I have already made my love of such dorky performance activities rather public. And before the first commercial break, it seemed like Glee was really gunning for my affections in particular, showcasing all of the following... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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It is not easy to stop being somebody's mommy, but there comes a time
when your kids are done. The five-year-old gets on that damn carousel
and only two or three horses go up and down before she has a tattoo and
a boyfriend. Mimi Swartz in her Double X Empty Nest column wonders how she will restart her life as her son Sam transitions away to his own adult life. Over the next few months... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website at DoubleX.com!)
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The joyful, saccharine, karaoke-inspring Glee, which premiered last night on Fox, got me wondering: What did we do before Tracy Flick? She first appeared, embodied by Reese Witherspoon, in 1999's Election,
a previously unidentified personality type, the driven, ruthless,
terrifyingly ambitious striver who micromanages her inevitable rise to
power in relentlessly cheerful tones. In the decade since Election, Flick has been transformed from a fresh, new character into an archetype, found frequently in... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website at DoubleX.com!)
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I'm not really sure why I keep watching American Idol contestant Adam Lambert's take on the creepy Tears for Fears song, "Mad World," which he sang again last night. He doesn't have any of the authenticity of unadorned British wonder Susan Boyle or even of the other finalist from last night: sweet, baby-faced Kris Allen. They call him "Glambert" because... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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