Review: Sawako Decides
Small town girl Sawako is constipated both literally and metaphorically. Her dream life in Tokyo has ground to a halt. Her get up and go has got up and gone. She’s on her 5th job and her 5th...
Category: Women
Mad Men marathon: 13 hours of the acclaimed series, back to back
Netflix has just made Mad Men available on streaming, just in time for the announcement that shooting for the long-awaited season five is due to start next week. This, of course, led my editor to...
Why is Casey Anthony being asked to do porn? Sex, scandal and punishing bad girls
It is very possible that Casey Anthony killed her daughter. Before we say anything else, we should say that: the fury that was unleashed over Anthony’s July 5 acquittal is based on some very...
The Further Adventures of Hermione Granger
It would be fair to say that neither I nor anyone else expected the sheer volume of the reaction to last week’s piece on Hermione Granger. It was a silly idea, one I submitted to my editor almost...
Smears and shields: The defense of Dominique Strauss-Kahn
New Yorkers who had been following the Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape case got a nasty shock this Saturday. In my case, it was broken to me gently. While I was picking up a soda in my local bodega, a...
True Blood: witches, werepanthers, and wicked sex
HBO's True Blood, a vampire and lust-filled adaptation of the Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris, has been captivating summer audiences for three seasons now with Alan Ball at the helm....
What justice for Ireland’s Magdalenes? Forced labour, now and then
During the 1990s, Ireland emerged from the oppressive theocracy of the Catholic Church. The progress began a decade earlier but with the Celtic Tiger and throwing off of shivering prayers, there was...
Review: Dancing Theology in Fetish Boots: Essays on Marcella Althaus-Reid
Lisa Isherwood and Mark Jordan, Dancing Theology in Fetish Boots: Essays in Honour of Marcella Althaus-Reid, SCM Press, 2010. Argentinian theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid was a pioneer in the field...
What IS Sarah Palin’s America? Following her “One Nation” bus tour
There is, perhaps, no politician more poetic than Sarah Palin. Yes, yes, I know: Contain your rage. What I mean by this is that Sarah Palin simply does not think in prose. Not for her, the...
Deconstructing Feminism’s Ivory Tower: A Review of Feminism FOR REAL
Feminism FOR REAL, edited by Jessica Yee, Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, 2011 Mainstream feminist activism and academics, even in the 21st century, have continued to be overly-invested in...