What we save in the fire
There are moments in the history of the world when words fail us; when nothing contained in all of human language can adequately describe the pain and horror we bear witness to. The only good thing...
Category: Mental health
I’m not proud or arrogant. I’m just shy.
If I could go back in time and change something, I would want more people to pay attention to social anxiety and social awkwardness. I'll tell you why. Social anxiety, a long-term and overwhelming...
Taylor Swift and America’s problem with feminine power
I regret to inform you that reactionary American conservatives are once again mad at Taylor Swift. And while I won’t be linking to the recent Federalist article attacking her (they don’t need...
Age gap discourse and the power of fake outrage
Of all the so-called discourse topics that constantly invade the lives of the extremely online — myself sadly included — none is more annoying that age gap discourse. Age gap discourse is what...
I’ve got a wild idea: what if we were less awful to each other?
Look, I'm not saying I've never poked an anti-choicer who wanted to strip our rights away, or snapped when a telephone scammer interrupts me to say there's a warrant out for my arrest if I don't pay...
How dawn happens
I write this having received hopeful news of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, while cities in Russia are being hit by drones, just a few days after a famous Russian warlord was killed by his own...
Male loneliness can’t be cured by “being better”
The go-to solution for male loneliness, usually expressed in sarcastic tweets (which I am guilty of, I’ll admit), is that men simply be better human beings. It’s true that as women in the Western...
Looking skyward, looking inward
This week, Northrop Grumman's nineteenth commercial resupply services mission for NASA blasted off from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. It was the end of an era. The first stage of the...
“The outfit is never what matters”: why groping doesn’t make you a real man
When I read about this sentencing scandal in Italy, I asked myself how many times I’ve been groped in my life. I turn 40 next year and the truth is, at this point, I don’t even remember —...
The Huw Edwards scandal has been unedifying all round
Considering nobody is entirely sure what precisely has happened, the BBC presenter scandal has left nobody covered in glory. Starting with The Sun, a Murdoch paper that has never hidden its disdain...